A depressing report from Pakistan by Owen Bennett Jones at the BBC:
In January 2011, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was killed by one of his own bodyguards, who was subsequently sentenced to death. Now Mumtaz Qadri is appealing against his sentence and some people believe he could yet hold office himself....
So why did his bodyguard kill him?
Taseer - who had a record of protecting minority communities in Pakistan - was campaigning on a blasphemy case, that of a Christian woman called Asia Bibi.
Some Muslim women in her Punjab village accused her of defiling their well by drinking out of it and they demanded that she convert.
She refused and they accused her of blasphemy.
When he heard about the case Taseer decided he would try to get her a presidential pardon. He called a few journalists and visited her in prison and there he criticised the blasphemy law.
The blasphemy laws in Pakistan mean that anyone accused of denigrating the Koran or the Prophet is subject to immediate imprisonment.
In fact that is often a protection. Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs.
Taseer believed the law was being misused by people who had petty disputes in order to get their enemies locked up. But when he said that he himself was accused of blasphemy and that is why his bodyguard decided Taseer should die.
After a week in Pakistan asking people about the Taseer case, I left believing that more Pakistanis have sympathy for the murderer Mumtaz Qadri than for his victim Salman Taseer.
The issue is so sensitive in Pakistan that no senior lawyer would take on the state's case against Qadri.
Eventually a Lahore lawyer did agreed to do it and I met him in his home where he now has two armed guards at the gate.
This is what he told me: "No lawyer would do it. My name was suggested. When I told my friends they said, 'Don't do it! Don't do it!' If the religious people here are annoyed with somebody they do not let them live.
"But Qadri's death sentence has to be maintained. If it is reduced to life, I tell you he will end up being released.
"And then he will become a member of parliament or even a minister because he is a hero, not only of the normal people but also very well read people, including ex-judges and serving judges. Very, very highly placed people are making him out to be a hero."
And that is true.
I went to see Mumtaz Qadri's brother at their sprawling home in Rawalpindi, where no fewer than 72 close relatives live in pretty cramped conditions.
Qadri's father was a brick-layer and his siblings have various low-paying jobs.
"You can't imagine what my brother has done," Qadri's eldest brother said. "People who before used to refuse to even shake our hands now come up to us and kiss our hands.
"We are just grateful that God chose a member of our family to protect the reputation of the Prophet."
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