Islamabad: A Pakistani policeman attached to Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani’s security detail has been detained along with an official of the country’s electronic media watchdog in connection with Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination, while investigators are looking for a cleric who motivated the killer.
Mumtaz Qadri, the Elite Force guard who gunned down 66-year-old Taseer in Islamabad on Tuesday for opposing the controversial blasphemy law, told police that he had been motivated by a cleric from the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Qadri, 26, surrendered soon after he shot Taseer in an upscale market.
Despite several raids, police were unsuccessful in apprehending the cleric or tracing his whereabouts, the Dawn newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying.
The daily identified the cleric only as ‘QH’, apparently the initials in the man’s name.
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