MALIK MUMTAZ QADRI
(Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri)
The reason he claimed that Governor Taseer was a blasphemer was that the governor opposed death penalty for saying or writing anything that was heresy or blasphemy as interpreted be fundamentalist Muslims. The Governor knew he was taking a risk. See {620970} .
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, better known as Mumtaz Qadri (pronunciation (help·info), Urdu: ممتاز قادری), was the assassin of Salmaan Taseer, Governor of Punjab. Qadri was a commando of the Elite Police and, at the time of the assassination, a member of the squad of personal bodyguards assigned to protect Salmaan Taseer. A follower of the Barelvi version of Sunni Islam, he assassinated Taseer on 4 January 2011. He claimed to have killed the Governor because Taseer spoke in defense of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Qadri was convicted by the Islamabad High Court, sentenced to death and hanged in February 2016.
