ASWJ protest sit-in outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad on Sunday, February 15, 2015/ PHOTO: WASEEM NAZIR/EXPRESS
A leader of the banned Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) was shot dead in the garrison city of Rawalpindi Sunday morning.
Unidentified men riding a motorcycle opened fire at Mazhar Siddiqui, the ASWJ spokesperson for Rawalpindi, while he, along with two other party workers, was travelling in a Qingqi rickshaw headed to Pirwadhai bus stop.
“Siddiqui was sitting in the rear seat of the rickshaw and was shot six times,” said the ASWJ leader Hafiz Oneeb, adding that Siddiqui died on the spot while another worker, Muhammad Ibrahim, sustained injuries. Later, the dead and the injured were taken to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).
The ASWJ supporters later took the body in front of the Supreme Court building and staged a sit-in. The protest was called off later at night when Adviser to the Prime Minister Irfan Siddiqui held a successful round of negotiations with the ASWJ activists and assured them to form a committee to probe targeted killings of the ASWJ workers.
On Saturday, the ASWJ leader Maulana Aurangzeb Farooqui was also attacked in Karachi.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 16th, 2015.
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