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Isamabad:
The United States urged Pakistan on Thursday to take motion over the killing of an American nationwide in a crowded courtroom as he confronted trial for blasphemy.
Tahir Ahmed Naseem was shot a number of instances at shut vary as he appeared within the northwestern metropolis of Peshawar on Wednesday.
“We urge Pakistan to take immediate action and pursue reforms that will prevent such a shameful tragedy from happening again,” the US State Department mentioned in a tweet.
As Naseem’s arraignment started earlier than the decide, a younger man within the room pulled out a handgun and shot him within the head, officers and witnesses mentioned. The younger man was arrested on the spot.
On Thursday, supporters of a hardline Islamist group held a protest rally in Peshawar calling for the discharge of the suspected shooter, saying he had defended his faith.
The aftermath of the killing, captured on video and shared on social media, confirmed Naseem slumped over in a chair beside the decide’s bench, as different shackled prisoners, some with bloodied garments, had been taken from the room.
“The young man who shot him had no remorse, and said he saw the Prophet Muhammad in a dream the night before,” Latif Afridi, who heads the Peshawar High Court Bar Association, advised Reuters.
Afridi questioned how the person managed to get a gun into the court docket given that every one guests are checked totally at three completely different factors.
“It is likely someone who can go without being checked, perhaps a police officer or a lawyer, handed the shooter the gun after he entered,” he mentioned.
According to the cost sheet towards Naseem, seen by Reuters, the American was in touch with a scholar at an Islamic college in Pakistan on Facebook and advised him he was a messiah despatched by God.
Naseem later met the coed in Peshawar, after which police arrested him and charged him with quite a few crimes, together with insulting the Prophet Muhammad, which may deliver the demise penalty in Pakistan.
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