[Dawn] Salman Taseer, the flamboyant and high-profile Governor of Punjab, was bumped off here on Tuesday by one of his security guards.
The guard, Mumtaz Qadri of the Punjab Elite Force, yelled out 'Allah-o-Akbar' and emptied two magazines of an SMG on the governor in the Kohsar Market before surrendering himself.
He later explained that he had killed Mr Taseer because of his recent criticism of the blasphemy law.
The governor had arrived here in the morning. After visiting the Presidency and Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, late in the afternoon, Mr Taseer, who was staying with a relative in Sector F-6/3, went to Kohsar Market which is home to some of the city's popular cafes.
He was accompanied by over a dozen guards, including nine personnel of the Elite Force.
According to a police officer, the governor went into a restaurant and when he came out after having a meal Qadri shot at him.
The guard is said to have fired at Mr Taseer from the back when he was going to the parking area.
According to police, he emptied his gun, loaded it with another magazine and fired a second round of 30 bullets at the governor.
The governor fell on the road and, by most accounts, keeled over dead. The guard put his gun down on the ground and was taken into custody.
Kohsar police reached the spot soon afterwards and took all the guards and the security squad into custody.
Dawn has learnt that police are searching for a man Mr Taseer had met in the market. He went missing after the liquidation.
The governor was taken to the Federal Government Services Hospital, but was pronounced dead. The security squad was taken to the cop shoppe for interrogation.
While questions were raised about why the rest of the security guards did not stop Qadri from opening fire, they told police during interrogation that they were taken by surprise and once they figured out what was happening they feared that if they used their guns they too would be suspected of being involved in the murder.
As the news of the liquidation spread, PPP leaders present in the capital visited the hospital where the body was being kept.
Distraught leaders spoke of the loss his death would bring to the party. Leaders of other parties, including the PML-N, also visited the hospital.
For the rest of the evening, the focus remained on the liquidation, the reaction to it and the investigation process being carried out at the Kohsar Market.
The quiet corner of Islamabad, which is often likened by visitors to a European town square and is frequented by foreigners, was crawling with coppers, journalists and others.
Political activity too came to a halt in the capital as a deadline announced by PLM-N leader Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain MĆ¼slim League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... minutes before the liquidation was forgotten in the commotion and despair that spread in the wake of the murder.
Fear was writ large on the faces and voices of most of the leaders who spoke to the media about the killing.
'INSTIGATED'
Interior Minister Rehman Malik was the first official to confirm that the governor's death was the work of his own security guard, who had confessed that he had been 'instigated' by Mr Taseer recently dubbing the blasphemy law as a black law.
"He was stationed in Rawalpindi and used to be part of the governor's security during his visits to Pindi and Islamabad. He had been on the governor's guard duty at least three times. His name is Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri.
"It is yet to be determined if this was an individual act or others were also involved."
The body was later taken to the Pakistain Institute of Medical Sciences for his appointment with Doctor Quincy, which concluded that the governor had been hit by 40 bullets -- 26 were lodged in the body and 14 had exited.
After the autopsy, the body was taken to Lahore for burial from Chakala Air Base in a C-130 aircraft.
An FIR had not been registered till late in the night.
AASIA FACTOR
Recently a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly committing blasphemy. Mr Taseer emerged as one of her most high-profile supporters.
He not only visited her in jail and held a presser with her, but also promised to get a presidential pardon for her.
Although the pardon was prevented by a court order and the PPP distanced itself from any attempt to amend the blasphemy law, Mr Taseer kept criticising it publicly.
Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who showed remarkably little curiosity about who actually done her in ... asked the interior minister to supervise the investigation.
According to his front man Farhatullah Babar, the president described the liquidation as "ghastly" and said that no words were strong enough to condemn it and that the perpetrators of the heinous crime must be punished.
The minister set up a joint investigation team (JIT) to ascertain whether the liquidation was the act of an individual or the result of a conspiracy.
The JIT, headed by Deputy Inspector-General of Islamabad Police Bani Amin, comprises officials of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau and the Special Branch of police.
Following the orders of the president, Mr Malik arrived here from Bloody Karachi and asked the JIT to present its report in 24 hours.
According to sources, the squad of Elite Force deputed on Tuesday had been provided by Rawalpindi police whose security guards the governor used whenever he came to Islamabad.
As the Pakistain People's Party announced a three-day mourning, the president asked its leaders to limit functions in connection with PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's 83rd birth anniversary on Wednesday to holding seminars at the district, divisional and provincial levels.
The president asked Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah and MNA Faryal Talpur to attend the funeral on his behalf. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will also attend the funeral.
In his condolence message President Zardari described Mr Taseer as endowed with great courage and energy. "He faced the vicissitudes of life with composure, resilience and courage."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/06/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#2
When the astronomers can see before the Big Bang, then we can have discussions about first causes and first causers. Until then, the theologians and the atheists are basing their arguments on faith in something vs. faith in nothing, not on facts.
#3
I, for one, am OUTRAGED that the pope did not finally admit that universe erupted from that seething vortex of madness, menace and perversion- the mind of the dead and dreaming CTHULHU!
Posted by: The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ||
01/06/2011 17:17 Comments ||
Top||
#4
#2 -- since time started with the Big Bang, talking about a 'before' time in that context is equivalent to talking about nothing. It's beyond human reason and calculation. The whole discussion is about faith anyway. And outrage.
#7
and the materials for the Big Bang came from where?
ultimately you come back to an Original SourceĀ. I have a name for him. Liberals and Atheists don't. Guess I'm the stoopid one
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/06/2011 20:26 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I have always been struck by the similarities between the Big Bang theory and the story in Genesis. They are both creation myths told in a different language. Perhaps if the shepherds of ancient Palestine had a better grasp of quantum mechanics and astrophysics, there would not be so much conflict.
Really smart physics guy, Steven Weinberg, has a very readable book about the Big Bang called "The First Three Minutes". In the intro, he admits it really should be called "The First 2 Minutes, 59 Seconds and change" because not only do we not know how the whole mess got started, but from the physics point of view, we simply cannot since that information was lost in the resulting poof.
#9
Coming from a conservative religious up bringing, the Creator of time and matter is not made up of time and matter. That is what is difficult to for one to get thier mind around. The same as a something such as a car designed and manufactured by a person does not begin to tell all there is to know of that machine's creator.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/06/2011 21:38 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I majored in science in college, my brother is (literally) a rocket scientist, and we will both tell you that the Big Bang theory does not preclude a diety.
I've never understood why people say the two can't co-exist, unless they just want be atheists.
(And just so we're clear, I'm not religious - just logical.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/06/2011 21:48 Comments ||
Top||
#13
What Barbara said. Except I'm not related to any rocket scientists that I'm aware of. ;-)
Being an atheist is also a matter of faith, pending individual post-death proof one way or another. But even once we know how the Big Bang came to occur, that still does not address why. Science and religion ask different questions -- and both have their uses.
Brussels has called for sweeping powers for regulators to seize failing EU banks, sack board members, and impose haircuts on senior bank debt, aiming to ensure that taxpayers are never again held hostage by high finance.
#1
And this administraton has the uncanny ability to find, hire and support these inexperienced Eggheads, Crackpots and Other Flimflam Artist to the detriment of this country.
#2
These mellifluous "really wise guys" made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts to "prove" the most amazing "thinkery" that belied common sense.
"What we need in this country today is more black men to confront it, because you as a white man can't confront it. Right now if you say anything to the black community, you are going to be accused of racism."
Personally I think muslims are planning on going along with it until they dominate the world, then they think they will be able to get rid of the jihadis and continue dominating things. This may be a big mistake.
As for the individuals willing to do violence, they are probably led to believe it is impossible for them to get into heaven unless they die in a physical act of jihad.
#2
it is impossible for them to get into heaven unless they die in a physical act of jihad
BINGO!
The other part of that ideology is to totally condemn and denigrate the world as it is.
#3
Early muslim pre-aggression communiques always declared, "we love death as much as you love life." One hadith reports a man who gets counsel on the nominal awards of "paradise," prior to fighting to the death.
The most warped aspect of Muhammad was his harsh use of human beings on earth, with the promise of deathly rewards. Hence references to "houris" ("virgins" of paradise), "rivers of wine," and "belching" of body wastes in heaven. One hadith claims the first meal in "paradise" will be a fish delicacy, local to the Indian Ocean. Logic dictates: the quran was a concoction, devised to satisfy the perverse sexual and material lusts of its fabulator.
Generations of Egyptian slaves built worthless structures like pyramids, based on fictions similar to quran spew. Muhammad was the most vulgar and self-interested piece of unflushed sewage ever to pollute the earth. No quarter to followers of that wild animal.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that a strip search of a male inmate by a female guard was unconstitutional.
In a 6-5 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said the search of the inmate Charles Byrd at a minimum-security jail in Maricopa County, Ariz. in 2004 was a "humiliating event" that violated his rights.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a three-judge appeals court panel ordered Byrd's civil rights suit dismissed in 2009.
But in its ruling Wednesday, the court determined that cross-gender searches of intimate areas violate the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches. Between decades of federal court decisions and the Patriot Act, there is effectively no limitation of the government's ability to search anyone, their communications, records and property, anytime, and in any way they want for little or no reason, utterly perverting the intent of the 4th Amendment. But it is *not* okay for an adult woman to look at an adult male's genitalia and buttocks while doing so, because that would "be unreasonable". No probs, that female prison guard can always get a job at the TSA...
so people in prison have more rights then free people going through airport security. Seriously folks wake up and see that our rights as humans are being taken away every day .
#5
Think about it In the context of the recent ruling on DADT. If the guard was male and the inmate complained becuase he percieved him to be gay, the Ninth Circuit Court could justify a hate crime conviction of the inmate.
The government has unlimited power to search and seize property from innocent American citizens.
But criminals, foreigners, enemies, terrorists, government officials, and journalists may never be searched, except with the prior approval of a leftist judge.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] Salman Taseer, the flamboyant and high-profile Governor of Punjab, was 
