Islamabad, July 27: Influential Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the founder and leader of Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shari’ah Mohammadi (TNSM), has been detained by Pakistani authorities.
“The government has arrested Sufi Mohammad,” Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftekhar Hussein told a press conference. “We will investigate his role in Swat and Malakand and then we will register a case against him.”
The Road to Swat’s Most Influential Man Sufi Mohammed brokered a peace deal in February between the government and local Taliban, led by his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, allowing implementation of Shari’ah in Swat and several districts of the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).
The army launched the offensive to flash out Taliban militants from Swat and neighboring Lower Dir and Buner districts in late April and early May.
The offensive, hailed by the US, reportedly killed more than 1,800 militants and 166 security personnel and displaced more than 2 million people.
Though Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani said earlier that the military had “eliminated” extremists, clashes have continued.
Some fear Taliban fled to the mountains and would return later especially that its top leader Maulana Fazlullah, who has a 50-million-rupee price on his head, remains at large.
Influential
Sufi Mohammad, 76, founded the TNSM in 1992 after he split from the Jamaat-e-Islami.
He was detained in 2001 after he returned from Afghanistan after the US-led invasion and later slapped with a seven-year sentence for violating borders laws.
His detention led to the split of TNSM into a militant faction led by Fazlullah and a non-violent faction led by Maulana Alam, Sufi Mohammad’s deputy.
TNSM was banned by then President Pervez Musharraf in 2002.
Sufi Mohammad was released in 2008.
IslamOnline interviewed Sufi Mohammad in early May.
We asked him about the kind of Shari`ah they want to enforce in the region.
“Shari`ah Mohammadi, nothing less nothing more,” he said.
“We will neither award punishment to any one nor would we execute. Everything will be done through Qazi courts,” he added.
“But nothing will be without cogent proof. The benefit of lack of evidence will always go to the accused,” Sufi Mohammad said at the time.
“The government officials and the police will act as per Qazi courts orders. No Taliban or TNSM workers will do that. This will be none of their business.”
He also denied accusations of trying to challenge the authority of the state.
“We neither support the idea of a state-within-state, nor would we allow any one to do that,” he said.
“We have no plans to interfere in ongoing political and economic systems. That will be done by the government of Pakistan.
“There will be the government of Pakistan and we will obey its orders after practical enforcement of Nizam-e-Adal.”
-Agencies