Pakistan’s most infamous death row prisoner has been executed in a move that risks enraging conservatives who regard him as a hero who killed to defend the honour of Islam.

Mumtaz Qadri was working as a bodyguard for the Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, when he shot and killed him in January 2011. Qadri was unrepentant and said he acted because Taseer advocated reform of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws.

In the months before his murder, the governor had sparked anger among religious conservatives by taking up the cause of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the prophet Muhammad.

Qadri was hanged amid a news blackout at 4.30am on Monday in a prison in Rawalpindi. In a sign of the extreme sensitivity surrounding the execution, The decision of Pakistan’s president, Mamnoon Hussain, to reject Qadri’s appeal for mercy went unannounced.

Officials said his family were summoned to the prison on Sunday night under the pretext that Qadri was feeling unwell. Fearing mass unrest, the main road into Islamabad was blocked by the police and many schools in the capital closed for the day.

Lawyers in the capital immediately announced a one-day protest strike, while Sunni Tehreek, a political wing of Pakistan’s majority Barelvi school of Islam, said it would mount nationwide protests. Qadri enjoyed widespread support among Barelvi Muslims.

Within hours of the news of Qadri’s execution, there were protests in Lahore, Rawalpindi and near the international airport in Karachi but broadcasters were ordered not to dwell on the story.



Television stations swiftly moved on to other news, including the Oscar won by Pakistani documentary maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on Sunday.

There was no coverage of crowds of angry Qadri supporters who flocked to pay their respects at his family’s house in Rawalpindi where his body was laid out on a bed, his head surrounded by roses.



His funeral prayers were due to be held on Tuesday at a park in Rawalpindi despite much speculation the government would try to prevent a mass gathering of Qadri’s supporters.



Raghib Naeemi, a Sunni cleric, complained bitterly about the secrecy surrounding Qadri’s execution.



“Justice has not been done because the execution process was not followed property and his death warrants were not announced by a local court,” he said. “The religious parties will not accept this challenge by the government.”



Taseer’s killing was one of the most traumatic events in recent Pakistani history, with the country’s liberal elite shocked into silence by the upsurge in support for Qadri.



Qadri was famously showered with rose petals and kissed by lawyers during his first appearance in court following the murder of Taseer, who was shot as he was leaving a restaurant in the capital, Islamabad. The judge who convicted Qadri of murder had to flee the country for his own safety.



Taseer, a business tycoon given the largely symbolic post of governor of Punjab, unwittingly unleashed a tide of anger after criticising the country’s internationally condemned blasphemy laws and for campaigning for the release of Bibi.



Qadri’s supporters compare the burly ex-policeman to Ilm-Deen, a carpenter’s apprentice who gained the status of saint and Muslim nationalist hero after being executed for killing the publisher of an allegedly blasphemous book in Lahore in 1929.

A mosque in Islamabad was named in honour of Qadri and the country’s army chief at the time reportedly told western ambassadors he could not publicly condemn him because too many of his soldiers sympathised with the killer.

While in prison, Qadri was treated like a religious sage by fellow inmates. He recorded popular devotional songs and incited prison guards into trying to kill blasphemy convicts, including one elderly British man.



After Taseer’s killing, senior members of his own party, the centre-left Pakistani People’s party, felt unable to speak out in support of the businessman-politician, even more so after Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian cabinet member who also criticised the blasphemy laws, was shot dead in Islamabad two weeks later.



Until recently few analysts believed there was any chance the state would dare put Qadri to death.



Zahid Hussain, an analyst and newspaper columnist, said the national mood had been changed in the last 18 months by a series of events, including the Taliban massacre in 2014 of more than 130 schoolboys in Peshawar and the ongoing military-led crackdown on militant groups in North Waziristan, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

“Before the army began its operations it seemed the narrative was controlled by extremists – people were terrified to even criticise them,” he said. “North Waziristan and the Peshawar school attack has changed the narrative completely.”

Hussain also credited a “very bold” landmark ruling in October by the country’s supreme court. which not only upheld Qadri’s murder conviction but also indicated that the blasphemy laws should not be considered beyond criticism.

The colonial-era laws, originally drawn up to limit conflict between Hindus and Muslims, were only used nine times between 1929 and 1982. But following reforms of the laws in the 1980s by Islamist dictator Zia-ul-Haq the number of cases rocketed into the thousands.

Those worst hit are often religious minorities or people embroiled in financial disputes with their accusers. Allegations are made on the basis of flimsy evidence or hearsay or involve absurd offences, such as the man accused of disrespecting Islam by throwing away the business card of a someone named after the prophet Mohammad.



Most struggle to defend themselves given judges’ fear of public opinion and the difficulty courts have in examining evidence without repeating any alleged blasphemy.



Bibi, a Christian woman from the village of Itanwali, was convicted under the law in 2009 following accusations of blasphemy by a group of Muslim women who objected to sharing drinking water with her. Taseer outraged the country’s religious lobby by visiting Bibi in prison and denouncing her conviction.

Shaan Taseer, one of the former governor’s sons, reacted to the news of Qadri’s execution by writing on his Facebook page that “a principle had been upheld”.



“I commend the judiciary, the president and the police for staying the course and doing their duty. And I thank them for honouring his memory,” he wrote, adding in Urdu: “Long live Pakistan.”