Review petition against the death sentence of Mumtaz Qadri rejected

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s apex court on Monday rejected a review petition against the death sentence of former elite force guard Mumtaz Qadri for gunning down former Punjab governor Salman Taseer.
The Supreme Court, while rejecting Qadri's petition, said his lawyers had failed to establish that Taseer had committed blasphemy and rejected his plea for the formation of a larger bench to hear the case.A three-member SC bench headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa heard the review petition against the court’s October 6 order for maintaining Qadri’s death penalty. "This is not a blasphemy but a murder case and Mumtaz Qadri has confessed to the killing at all stages and was arrested from the crime scene," the court verdict said.
In Oct 2011, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Rawalpindi had sentenced Qadri to death for killing governor Taseer. He was killed in Islamabad’s Koshar Market in January 2011. Following the decision, Qadri's counsels had challenged the ATC's decision in Islamabad High Court (IHC) on two counts. The first petition had demanded that Qadri's death sentence be overturned and the second asked for Section 7, which asks for capital punishment for acts of terrorism, of the anti-terrorism act to be declared void. In its March 2015 ruling, the IHC rejected Qadri's application against his death sentence but accepted his petition to void ATA's Section 7. Last October, the SC dismissed Qadri’s plea against his death sentence and also declared null and void the IHC verdict that removed Section 7 of the ATA.