Slipping through: Cases against Sufi Muhammad transferred to sessions court

The founder of TNSM has been acquitted in 10 out of 13 cases over lack of evidence

PESHAWAR:

An anti-terrorism court judge Abdur Rauf Khan ordered the transfer of two sedition cases registered against Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) founder Maulana Sufi Muhammad to sessions courts on Saturday.

The court has been hearing cases against Sufi Muhammad inside Central Prison Peshawar where he has been incarcerated since 2009. The ATC announced its reserved judgement and accepted the applications of Sufi Muhammad who wanted his cases to be transferred to a regular court.

“We have given applications under Section 23 of the Anti-Terrorism Act to transfer the cases to a regular court and the ATC accepted the requests today,” Sufi Muhammad’s counsel, Adil Majeed, told The Express Tribune on Saturday. The sedition cases of Timergara and Mingora will be heard in Timergara and Mingora sessions courts respectively.

Majeed said there were 13 cases against Sufi Muhammad; he has been acquitted in 10 cases while the judgement on three is still pending.

On February 7, Sufi Muhammad was indicted in a sedition case by an anti-terrorism court for delivering an anti-government speech at the Timergara Rest House, Lower Dir in 2009.

He was charged with gathering members of the proscribed organisation and delivering a hate speech, calling the democratic government ‘unIslamic’.

This was the second indictment; the first one was in the case registered against the cleric for a speech at Grassy Grounds, Mingora.

Out of the three pending cases against the accused, the ATC had transferred one case related to the attack on a police station in Kabal to a regular court.

According to the case details, on June 18, 1995, Sufi Muhammad and his accomplices held a demonstration outside Kabal police station in Swat and then allegedly attacked it. No human loss was reported in the incident. On December 17, 2014 the court dismissed the application of acquittal of Sufi Muhammad and his accomplices.

The charges

The FIR against Sufi Muhammad in the sedition cases was registered under Section 153-A of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 11-F3 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The former section deals with inciting enmity between different groups: creating disharmony, hatred and ill-will between different religious or racial groups, castes or communities. The latter, Section 11-F3, deals with the meeting or gathering of members of a proscribed organisation.

Sufi Muhammad has been previously charged with attacks against government installations, conspiracy against the state, in addition to treason and sedition.

From eliciting terror to acquittals

By November 2013, at least five cases against the radical cleric had been dismissed. At the time, insiders familiar with the matter had told The Express Tribune most of the cases were disposed of over lack of evidence.

On October 7, 2013, the court acquitted Sufi Muhammad in one sedition case. The ATC judge, Shoaib Khan, acquitted the chief of TNSM after the prosecutor was unable to produce suitable evidence before the court which could show Sufi Muhammad was involved in the cases for which he was arrested from Malakand Division.

Sufi Muhammad is the father-in-law of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah and belongs to Dir.

A member of Jamaat-e-Islami in the 80s, Sufi Muhammad had pushed for an unyielding version of the Sharia in Malakand for over two decades. He formed the TNSM in 1989 after parting ways with JI.

After a lot of back and forth with the government over the Sharia and Islamic courts, eventually the cleric left Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11. Sufi Muhammad was jailed in 2001 upon his return but released in 2008 to woo Swat’s Taliban insurgents to agree to the infamous Nizam-e-Adl peace deal. In 2009, the military launched operations in Swat, Buner and Dir and Sufi Muhammad reneged on the peace deal and was eventually arrested.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2015.