Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who was assigned to Salman Taseer's security detail and confessed to the killing, was charged and ordered to appear before an anti-terror court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.
But as a growing crowd of Islamist lawyers and madrassa students descended on the building in support of Qadri, authorities instead drove him to a makeshift court hastily set up in heavily protected building in Islamabad.
But the crowd in Rawalpindi set up a cordon in protest, preventing the judge from leaving for Islamabad, lawyers and an AFP reporter said.
"We requested the judge that legally he cannot go to Islamabad to hear the accused and he accepted our request," lawyer Malik Waheed Anjum told reporters.
"The judge ordered Islamabad police to present the accused in his court in Rawalpindi," he added.
More than seven hours after journalists first gathered at the Rawalpindi court for the expected hearing, Qadri finally arrived and was feted with rose petals by supporters for the second day running.
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