July 08, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 4, 1429

QUETTA, July 7: Members of the Balochistan Bar Association staged a sit-in outside the chief minister’s secretariat in protest against the killing of prominent lawyer Ghulam Mustafa Qureshi here on Monday and announced a three-day mourning in the province.

According to police, the lawyer was going to the high court when gunmen on a motorcycle with their faces covered opened fire on him on the Jan Mohammad Road and escaped.

A procession of protesting lawyers, led by Ali Ahmed Kurd, BBA president Amanullah Baloch and Balochistan High Court Bar Association’s chief Shakeel Ahmed Hadi, went to the secretariat.

Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani met the protesters and the victim’s father, Arif Ali Qureshi, at the gate of the secretariat.

The chief minister invited representatives of the lawyers to his office, but he was told that a decision about whether to hold talks with him would be taken in a general body meeting of the BBA on Tuesday.

The lawyers’ leaders demanded resignation of the governor and the chief minister for their failure to apprehend the criminals who were continuously targeting innocent citizens.

They said that being tribal chiefs, the governor and the chief minister had personal guards to protect themselves and the government had deputed a large number of police personnel for security of members of the provincial cabinet, instead of protecting the citizens.

Ghulam Mustafa’s father said he had no enmity. He said Mustafa was his only son and he had eight daughters. He termed it a case of target killing.

When police took the body to the Civil Hospital, a large number of people belonging to Hazara tribes gathered there. Some of them fired in the air, causing panic in the area. They also pelted vehicles with stones and set on fire a government vehicle near the Science College. Police and personnel of other law-enforcement agencies dispersed the protesters.