Published in International Herald Tribune: January 5, 2011

LAHORE, Pakistan — The killer of a prominent secular politician had been removed from a special police branch several years ago because of his extremist religious views, but was still assigned to an elite security force tasked with guarding the victim, a senior police official said Wednesday.

It was not yet clear whether the assignment as a body guard to the slain politician, the governor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer, was an oversight or part of a larger plot by extremist groups. But the profile of the 26-year-old assassin, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, raised alarming questions about the vetting and screening of security personnel, former police officials and associates of the former governor said.

The two men — victim and killer — have quickly come to represent the competing forces struggling for the soul of this deeply restive country. Mr. Qadri appeared before a magistrate in Islamabad and was showered by hundreds of supporters with rose petals and garlands, even as he was charged with murder and terrorism.

Meanwhile, thousands of mourners and party workers pressed into the grounds of the Governor’s House in Lahore to attend the funeral of Mr. Taseer, a successful businessman and prominent voice for secularism in the country who had recently become the focus of religious fury for speaking out against the nation’s strict blasphemy laws.

At a market in Islamabad on Tuesday, Mr. Qadri pumped more than 20 shots into Mr. Taseer’s back, Pakistani media reported, and yet was not fired on by any other member of the security detail, raising still more questions about whether any of the others knew of his plans in advance. Mr. Qadri immediately surrendered, called himself a “slave of the Prophet,” and indicated that he had killed Mr. Taseer for his campaign against the blasphemy law.

Mr. Qadri, who hails from Bhara Kahu, a suburb of Islamabad, currently lives with his family in Muslim Town, a neighborhood of Rawalpindi, the military garrison town adjacent to Islamabad.

He joined the Special Forces branch of the Punjab police in 2002, but was declared a security risk during a routine check by his superior, Nasir Khan Durrani, who was the Rawalpindi police chief at the time.

In 2008, Mr. Qadri nonetheless managed to join the Elite Force of Punjab police. “He was already a compromised person,” said Raza Rumi, a columnist and consulting editor of The Friday Times, a Lahore-based weekly newspaper, of which Mr. Taseer was the publisher.

“He was not fully loyal to the state,” he added. “Obviously, it seems that he had links with some extremist organization and worked on a particular agenda.”

Mr. Qadri is a follower of Dawat-e-Islami, a religious party based in Karachi, but so far investigators have not linked him to any extremist religious organization, the senior police official said. Investigators are combing through his phone records and personal belongings. They are also questioning his five brothers and father. Five other police officers who served with him are also under detention, the official said.

The killing has exposed the deep divide in the society between religious and secular forces, and sent a chilling message of intimidation to secular-minded politicians, who have already begun to back away from the drive to amend the blasphemy law.

Even moderate religious leaders refused to condemn the assassination, and more hard-line religious parties and leaders called for a boycott of Mr. Taseer’s funeral. Some religious leaders appeared obliquely even to condone the attack.

More than 500 religious leaders of Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat, a leading Barelvi religious party, forbade its followers to either pray or attend the funeral prayers for Mr. Taseer, reported Jang, the country’s leading Urdu newspaper in its Wednesday issue.

“No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salman Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident,” read a statement attributed to the religious clerics.

Maulana Fazalur Rehman, the leader of Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazal, a Deobandi religious party, which left the federal cabinet last month, appeared to issue a veiled warning to supporters of Mr. Taseer, saying that sympathizing with blasphemers was an extreme position.

Even within the secular-minded Pakistan Peoples Party, Mr. Taseer’s vocal opposition to religious extremism was unique. And his killing — and the tense environment surrounding his funeral — served as a grim reminder of the risks politicians in Pakistan face when countering religious extremists.

Even as Mr. Taseer was buried with full military honors and a ceremonial police guard in the Cavalry Ground graveyard, a place reserved for martyrs of the army, his colleagues and supporters expressed grief and condemnation but avoided commenting on the blasphemy issue. Some politicians did not attend the services.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Interior Minister Rehman Malik represented the government and the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party amid tight security. But Mr. Taseer’s close friend and ally, President Asif Ali Zardari, was not there. Also absent were opposition politicians Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif, fierce political rivals of Mr. Taseer.

Scores of party workers were not able to gain access to the ground because of the tight security and big crowds. Even the prime minister was unable to reach the coffin to say his goodbyes because of the press of people. The large black coffin, draped with the Pakistani flag, was carried by military helicopter to the nearby graveyard.

Workers from the Pakistan Peoples Party chanted slogans in memory of the party’s founder and amid some emotional scenes blamed the opposition Punjab government for failing to provide adequate security to the governor.

Sajida Amir, a provincial assembly member from the Pakistan Peoples Party, said the party had always made sacrifices for democracy. “The mission will continue and we will continue to speak out on these things,” she said.