Pakistan’s interior minister was recovering in hospital Monday after being shot in a suspected assassination attempt possibly linked to blasphemy, with the attack seen as a “bad omen” for nationwide elections.
Ahsan Iqbal, 59, was shot in the right arm as he prepared to leave a public meeting in his constituency in Punjab province late Sunday.
A man identified by police only as “Abid” and said to be in his early 20s was wrestled to the ground by police and bystanders as he was preparing to fire a second shot. He has been taken in to custody.
The local deputy commissioner Ali Anan Qamar told AFP that the shooter said he carried out the attack over a small amendment to the oath that election candidates must swear which was hastily reversed last year after it was linked to blasphemy.
The controversy ignited a three-week sit-in last November by a previously little-known Islamist group which paralysed the capital and ended when the government capitulated to the protesters’ demands — including the ousting of the federal law minister — in a deal brokered by the military.
At the time many Pakistanis and analysts warned that a dangerous precedent had been set in which fringe groups could bend the state to their will by citing blasphemy, a highly inflammatory charge in the conservative Muslim country.
Iqbal, known as a champion of Pakistan’s much-persecuted religious minorities, was heavily involved in the negotiations at the time. He has previously condemned hate speech against groups such as the Ahmadis, an Islamic minority sect who were at the centre of last year’s controversy.
After the shooting he was rushed first to a local hospital and then airlifted to Lahore, where video footage released by his ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) showed him being lowered from a helicopter on a stretcher, his eyes open as he responded to questions.
Doctors later said he was in stable condition.
