Pakistan on Tuesday night gave a two-hour notice to the supporters of Mumtaz Qadri, executed for killing former Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, to end their three-day sit-in as authorities arrested over 1,100 protesters who were demanding declaration of the Islamist assassin as a “martyr”.
Over 25,000 protesters had entered and besieged Islamabad’s high-security zone on Sunday, damaging public buildings and breaking barriers that had been erected.
While most of them left on Monday, a few hundred are still continuing their sit-ins outside the Parliament House and other key Government installations for the third day on Tuesday.