SC dismisses review petition of Taseer’s assassin

ISLAMABAD:

Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed assassin of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, inched closer to execution on Monday as the Supreme Court rejected his petition for a sentence review.

A three-judge bench — headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa — took up Qadri’s review petition against the top court’s October 6 ruling in which his death penalty was upheld.

Qadri, a former police commando, assassinated Taseer in Islamabad’s upscale Koshar Market in broad daylight on January 4, 2011 over his calls for reforming the country’s blasphemy laws. Taseer had also been vocal in his support for Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who has been on death row since 2010, when she was convicted of committing blasphemy.

Monday’s hearing lasted for 45 minutes. Qadri’s lawyer Mian Nazir Akhtar, a former judge of the Lahore High Court, failed to point out any legal errors in the top court’s October 6 judgment. And the court dismissed the review plea as ‘not maintainable’.

“The review petition has been dismissed by the judges’ panel,” Qadri’s second attorney Khwaja Muhammad Sharif, former chief justice of the LHC, told the media. He said his client’s last option was to file a mercy petition to President Mamnoon Hussain.

The defence could not prove that Taseer had committed blasphemy, the judges’ panel said. Section295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) is a man-made law, which is not beyond criticism. The bench also did not agree with Qadri’s lawyers that the court had handed down a ‘brief verdict’ on October 6. “It was a detailed order in which not a single point was missed.”

Qadri was arrested from the crime scene along with his weapon. And he has also confessed to Taseer’s murder, the bench said. Guidance could only be sought from Sharia, if it had been proved that Section 295-C would be invoked against Taseer. Judges do not give verdicts on the basis of newspaper clippings, the bench said. Qadri’s counsel requested the judges’ panel formed a larger bench for hearing the review petition of his client. But the plea was dismissed as ‘not maintainable’.

Anticipating protests from Qadri’s supporters, authorities had stepped up security in the federal capital on Monday. Law enforcers stood guard at key buildings while pedestrians and motorists were not allowed to enter the Red Zone.

Qadri was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on October 1, 2011 on murder and terrorism charges. Later, the Islamabad High Court maintained his death penalty under the PPC but dropped terrorism charges against him.

However, on October 6, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court order and restored Qadri’s death sentence under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Justice Khosa, the author of the verdict, said Qadri had acted on the basis of hearsay and that he had murdered the serving governor of Punjab without making any effort whatsoever to verify whether or not Taseer had actually committed blasphemy.


Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2015.