{"id":8433,"date":"2024-09-27T15:15:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T15:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/27\/pakistan-says-police-responsible-for-killing-a-doctor-accused-of-blasphemy\/"},"modified":"2024-09-27T15:15:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T15:15:35","slug":"pakistan-says-police-responsible-for-killing-a-doctor-accused-of-blasphemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/27\/pakistan-says-police-responsible-for-killing-a-doctor-accused-of-blasphemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan says police responsible for killing a doctor accused of blasphemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Multan, Pakistan \u2014<\/strong> Pakistan\u2019s government said Thursday that police had orchestrated the killing of a doctor who was in custody after he was accused of blasphemy. Officers then lied about the circumstances of his death, claiming he was killed in a shootout between police and armed men, a provincial minister said. <\/p>\n

The statement marks the first time the government has accused security forces of what the doctor\u2019s family and rights groups have said amounted to an extrajudicial killing carried out by police. <\/p>\n

The doctor, Shah Nawaz, from the southern Sindh province, had given himself up to police last week in the district of Mirpur Khas, following assurances that he would be given a chance to prove his innocence. <\/p>\n

Days earlier in the city of Umerkot, a mob claimed he insulted Islam\u2019s Prophet Muhammad and shared blasphemous content on social media, and demanded his arrest. The mob also burned Nawaz\u2019s clinic. <\/p>\n

According to the provincial Interior Minister, Ziaul Hassan, a government probe concluded that Nawaz was killed shortly after he gave himself up to authorities in what was a staged \u201cfake encounter\u201d engineered by the security forces. <\/p>\n

There was no shootout with armed men as police had claimed, Hassan told reporters at a news conference in the southern port city of Karachi, and added that Nawaz\u2019s family will be able to file murder charges against police officers who killed him. <\/p>\n

Hours after Nawaz was fatally shot and his body handed over to his family, a mob snatched it from Nawaz\u2019s father and burned it. <\/p>\n

Hassan\u2019s statement backed up Nawaz\u2019s family allegations earlier this week. <\/p>\n

Accusations of blasphemy, sometimes even just rumors, can spark riots and mob rampages in Pakistan. Although killings of blasphemy suspects by mobs are common, extrajudicial killings by police are rare. <\/p>\n

\u2018Eye for an eye\u2019<\/h2>\n

Under Pakistan\u2019s controversial blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death, though authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy. <\/p>\n

Nawaz\u2019s father thanked the government for backing the family and demanded that his son\u2019s killers face justice under the eye-for-an-eye concept under Sharia, or Islamic law. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have only one demand: Those police officers who staged the killing of my son \u2026 must also be killed in the same manner,\u201d said Nawaz\u2019s father, Mohammad Saleh. <\/p>\n

Saleh told The Associated Press over the phone that he was grateful for all the support the family was given and to all those who condemned extremist clerics who had enraged the mob with calls for his son to be killed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose who killed my son should be punished quickly so that others learn a lesson and not indulge in extrajudicial killings in the future,\u201d said Nawaz\u2019s mother, Rehmat Kunbar. <\/p>\n

She added her son can no longer come back to her but that she wants to save the children of other parents from the hands of extremists. <\/p>\n

Nawaz\u2019s killing was the second case of an extrajudicial killing by police this month in Pakistan. <\/p>\n

A week before, an officer opened fire inside a police station in the southwestern city of Quetta, fatally wounding Syed Khan, a suspect held on accusations of blasphemy. <\/p>\n

Khan was arrested after officers rescued him from an enraged mob that claimed he had insulted Islam\u2019s prophet. But he was killed by a police officer, Mohammad Khurram, who was quickly arrested. However, the tribe and the family of the slain man later said they had pardoned the officer. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multan, Pakistan \u2014 Pakistan\u2019s government said Thursday that police had orchestrated the killing of a doctor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}