ISLAMABAD: Gunmen in northwest Pakistan have shot dead a retired air force official who was a member of the country’s Ahmadi minority, police said yesterday, bringing to seven the number of people killed in violence against the persecuted community this year.
The incident took place in Attock district, around 64 kilometres north of the capital Islamabad on Wednesday, a spokesman for the community said.
“Latif Aalam Butt, a well-known Ahmadi was killed outside his house in Kamra, district Attock. He was returning home from his stationery store, when unknown assailants repeatedly fired at him,” Saleem ud Din said.
Local police also confirmed the incident, adding that Butt was 62. It was not immediately clear what role he had served in the air force.
“The victim’s son filed an application here at the police station today,” local police official Qasim Ali said.
“According to his son’s account, the victim owned a stationery shop in Saddar market and was returning home from his shop during the incident.”
Butt’s neighbour reported the incident and he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the local hospital, Ali quoted the son as saying.
Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadi sect has a number of unique views including that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar, capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir.
Agitation against the group began as early as the 1950s, eventually culminating in a constitutional amendment in 1974 that ruled the group non-Muslims -- making Pakistan the only state to adopt such a policy.
Ahmadis are today one of the most persecuted minority groups in Pakistan. They are frequently attacked, accused of blasphemy and subjected to discrimination in education and the workplace. They are also banned from going on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Gunmen shot dead an Ahmadi doctor in the southern city of Mirpur Khas last month. In July, an angry mob torched an Ahmadi neighbourhood in the city of Gujranwala, killing a woman and two girls after a local Ahmadi boy was accused of blasphemy.
AFP
