Pakistani lawyers protest killing of colleague

KARACHI, Sep 11 (Reuters) Lawyers in the Pakistani city of Karachi boycotted courts today in a protest against what they said was the targetted killing of a colleague who was an active member of a campaign against the government.

A gunman on the back of a motorcyle shot lawyer Raja Mohammad Riaz dead yesterday as he sat in a taxi, about a kilometre (half a mile) from the city-centre provincial High Court.

''We have given a 72-hour ultimatum to the government to arrest the killers,'' said Naeem Qureshi, secretary general of the Karachi Bar Association.

He declined to say who he thought was responsible for killing Riaz but but said he believed it was a targetted attack.

Lawyers have been at the forefront of a campaign against the government of President Pervez Musharraf since March, when Musharraf outraged many members of the judiciary by trying to dismiss the Supreme Court chief.

Riaz, a former vice president of the bar association, had been an active member of the campaign, Qureshi said. Bar members would boycott courts again tomorrow and would step up their protest campaign if authorities failed to act, he said.

Raja's killing yesterday came as the high court adjourned a hearing into the killing of about 40 people in Karachi in May during clashes between pro-government and opposition activists.

The violence broke out when the then suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry tried to meet lawyers in the city, which is controlled by the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.

The hearing was adjourned as hundreds of MQM workers, some chanting slogans, milled inside and outside the premises.

Many Karachi residents and opposition politicians blamed the MQM for instigating the May 12-13 violence.

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