Slain Pakistani governor had sought change in blasphemy law
CWN - January 04, 2011
Taseer had become the target of Islamic fundamentalists recently after he initiated an unsuccessful clemency bid for Aasia Bibi, the 45-year old Christian mother of five children, who was to death on a trumped-up blasphemy charge in early November. Following this, Islamic scholars issued an apostasy decree against the governor-- even as Pakistan president Asif Ali Sardari backtracked from a move to grant Bibi an executive pardon.
Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik reported that the gunman who killed Taseer cited the governor’s opposition to the blasphemy law as his motive for the assassination. “We have lost a great friend and a bold crusader against the blasphemy law,” Archbishop Lawrence Saldana, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan, told CWN from his office in Lahore.
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