Islamabad, July 26 (Reuters): Pakistani police have arrested a former member of parliament for his alleged involvement in the beheading of a Polish engineer by Taliban militants in February, his brother and an aide said today.

Shah Abdul Aziz, a cleric and former lawmaker from an Islamist party, was apprehended after the main person accused in the case, a militant named Attaullah Khan, told the police he had killed geologist Piotr Stanczak on Aziz’s orders, his brother said.

“They’re saying he’s behind the killing of the engineer as Khan told the police my brother ordered him to do this,” Mehboob Elahi said.

Stanczak was kidnapped last September while visiting one of his company’s sites near Attock city, about 65km west of Islamabad.

Taliban militants released a video tape in February of them beheading him, saying they were doing so because the government had refused to free 60 captured insurgents.

Elahi said his brother had been missing for more than a month and that it was only after a high court pressed authorities to release him that the charges were levelled.

The case against Aziz was “false and fabricated”, he said.

An anti-terror court in Rawalpindi sent Aziz on a three-day judicial remand yesterday, during which he would remain in custody, he said.

Aziz’s close aide Khalid Khuwaja admitted that the cleric had close links with militants, but said he used those ties to try to help the government secure the release of kidnapped people, including Stanczak.

Sufi arrest

Pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad, who brokered a now-defunct peace deal between the authorities and the insurgents, was today arrested in Peshawar for allegedly helping militants and fomenting unrest in the Swat Valley.