A military court in Pakistan has sentenced a top
Pakistani Taliban leader from the Swat region to
death.
Muslim Khan, a former spokesman for the
militants, was convicted of killing 31 people,
including civilians and security personnel, the
military said.
He is among eight "terrorists" whose death
penalty was confirmed by army chief Gen Qamar
Javed Bajwa.
The military courts were set up in the aftermath
of the 2014 Peshawar school massacre. Their
term expires next week.
Others whose convictions were confirmed by the
army chief on Wednesday include four gunmen
sentenced for involvement in a 2015 bus
massacre of Ismaili Shias in Karachi , and the
assassination of social activist Sabeen Mahmud ,
also in Karachi the same year.
Why 'butcher of Swat'?
Muslim Khan, 62, started out as a student
activist of a left-wing secular party in the 1960s,
but underwent an ideological transformation in
the early 1990s when a pre-Taliban Islamist
movement briefly emerged in his native Swat
region.
In 2007, he became the chief spokesman of the
Swat Taliban, and was the movement's public
face during its stranglehold over the region which
continued until the winter of 2009.
His forceful defence of the Taliban's policy of
killings, beheadings and the destruction of
schools in Swat earned him and Swat Taliban
chief Mullah Fazlullah the title of "butchers of
Swat".
The military's statement described him as "a
spokesman of a proscribed organisation [who]
was involved in killing innocent civilians, attacking
armed forces and law enforcement agencies of
Pakistan".
These attacks resulted in the death of 31 people
and injuries to 69 others, the statement said,
adding that he was involved in "slaughtering" four
soldiers.
"He was also involved in kidnapping two Chinese
engineers and a local civilian for ransom. The
convict admitted his offences before the
Magistrate and the trial court. He was awarded
the death sentence."
A former BBC Urdu correspondent, Abdul Hai
Kakar, who met him in September 2009, reported
that he spoke several languages, including Urdu,
English, Arabic and Persian, in addition to his
mother tongue Pashto.
He had lived in or travelled across more than a
dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe, the
US and the Far East.
He has been in custody since his arrest in 2009
during the military operation that drove the
Taliban out of Swat.
Was the trial fair?
The military court trials are held in secret, and
prisoners on trial are held in internment centres
run by the military, away from the mainstream
jail population.
Scores of suspects have been convicted by the
military courts since they were set up in January
2015 - obtaining accurate information is difficult
because secrecy makes it almost impossible to
scrutinise the process.
Dawn newspaper said more than 270 cases had
been sent to the military courts in the past two
years. They gave death sentences to 161 people,
while 116 were given jail terms, mostly life
sentences.
A report by the Geneva-based International
Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in June had a lower
figure, saying the military courts had convicted
more than 100 people, "possibly including
children".
So far only 12 suspects have been executed by
the military courts.
Others have gone to the courts to challenge the
fairness of the trials, but judges have failed to
intervene.
The ICJ has accused the Pakistani authorities of
failing to make public key information about the
trials, with similar objections raised by the
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
and other groups.
The BBC asked the Interior Ministry for
information on cases tried by the military courts
but has not yet received a response.
What happens to military courts now?
The convictions made public on Wednesday are
believed to be the last by military courts before
their legal term expires in January 2017.
It is not clear if their term will be extended.
Elements within the military want the term of the
military courts extended, believing the government
is not up to dealing with terrorism-related
offences.
But rights groups and some political circles say
law and order has improved and the justification
for military courts no longer exists.
