...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...valley, with treason and murder, lawyers said.
Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of a Taliban insurgency that paralysed the northwestern valley from late 2007 until a military offensive in the spring of 2009, was set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock two years ago.
He is now set to go on trial in an anti-terrorism court in Swat, held behind closed doors in the a maximum security prison in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar over security fears.
"Today, the court framed murder and treason charges on Sufi Mohammad and his 23 followers," defence lawyer Majeed Adil Majeed told AFP.
"He and his followers broke the law by attacking a cop shoppe, killing 11 people, including nine paramilitary and two coppers, and attacked government buildings, which is treason," Majeed said.
Mohammad has refused to defend himself in court as he does not recognise them and Majeed took on his counsel on orders from the judge.
Arshad Abdullah, law minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
province, confirmed the indictment.
Fazlullah, who has a 50-million-rupee ($615,000) price on his head, was the architect of an uprising that marked the only time that a district under Pak government control has effectively slipped into hands of the Taliban.
Pakistain security officials say Fazlullah decamped into eastern Afghanistan after the army crushed the Taliban uprising in Swat in 2009.
Under a deal brokered by Mohammad, the Pak government agreed to allow the implementation of Islamic law in Swat once violence had stopped but Talibs led by Fazllulah refused to lay down arms and undermined the deal.