Pakistan arrests pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad

By ASIF SHAHZAD, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD – A Pakistani minister says authorities have arrested pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad, who brokered a now-failed peace deal between the government and militants in the Swat Valley.

Mian Iftikhar, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said police arrested Mohammed on Sunday in Peshawar for speaking against the government and encouraging violence and terrorism.

The influential cleric negotiated a peace deal with the government in February that was widely seen as allowing the Taliban to take control of the valley. But the deal collapsed in April when the Taliban advanced into neighboring districts, triggering a military offensive that prompted a spree of retaliatory attacks by militants in the northwest and beyond.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani police have detained a former lawmaker and a suspected Taliban militant in connection with the beheading of a Polish geologist kidnapped near the Afghan border last year, a police official said Sunday.

Investigator Malik Tariq Awan, who is part of a team of officials from police and intelligence agencies, told The Associated Press that the two were taken into custody a month ago.

He named one as Shah Abdul Aziz, a member of a pro-Taliban religious party who was elected to parliament's lower house in 2002 as part of an anti-American alliance made up of several religious parties.

Awan said by telephone from the Attock district bordering Pakistan's troubled North West Frontier Province that Aziz is believed to have plotted the abduction of Piotr Stanczak, who was kidnapped by gunmen in September while surveying oil and gas fields for a Krakow-based geophysics company. Three Pakistanis traveling with the geologist were killed.

A video emerged in February of Stanczak's beheading, and his remains were recovered and flown back to Poland in April.

In the video, a hooded militant said they killed the geologist because Pakistan's government failed to meet their demands of releasing their 26 prisoners and withdrawing troops from tribal regions.

Stanczak's beheading was the first of a westerner in Pakistan since Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's in 2002.

Another senior police official, Raja Hasan Akhtar, said Aziz has been in the custody of the Islamabad police, who questioned him for a month along with other intelligence agencies.

"The whole plan was his. He was also acting as a go-between for the Taliban to negotiate their demands with the government," Akhtar said.

The other man detained was identified as suspected militant Ata Ullah. Awan said he was arrested in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, adjacent to the capital, and was also questioned for a month.

He said Ullah gave a statement before an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi in which he admitted his role in the beheading.

Ullah told the court that he and other militants had seized and killed the engineer on orders from a Taliban commander in Darra Adam Khel, a town in the North West Frontier Province, Awan said.

"Aziz acted to negotiate our demands. At one stage, he told our commander to kill" the geologist if the lawmaker didn't made contact with the commander in a week, Awan quoted part of Ullah's court statement as saying.

Akhtar said the police would produce both of the accused in court on Monday, seeking to have their custody order extended so authorities can collect more evidence.