Infamous Taliban flogger nabbed 3 years after whipping girl

A Taliban flogger caught on camera mercilessly whipping a girl in Pakistan's turbulent northwest has been nabbed from the Swat valley, three years after the shameful episode which hit global headlines.

A member of 'Tehrik-i-Taliban Swat' Fazal Hadi stated to be the central character in the infamous flogging incident of a woman in Swat in 2009, was arrested yesterday by Swat police, Dawn reported.

A two-minute video of the incident surfaced in April, 2009, showing the flogger whipping the girl despite her screams "For God's sake, please stop it, stop it", shaking the world and drawing widespread condemnation.

But the militant with black beard and a turban turned deaf ear to her mercy pleas and continued his job and stopped only after completing the "sentence" of lashing her 34 times.

The paper said Hadi was picked up by a raiding party from his ancestral home of Asbarn and told the police that he had just returned from Sindh province, where he had gone hiding since 2009 after the incident was splashed by the media.

The report said the woman named Saira had turned up before police and claimed that she was the woman in footage.

The woman married with two children had charged Fazal Hadi by name along with several other suspected militants of the area.

The militants claimed that a so-called Shariah court had ordered 30 lashes sentence for her after charging her with immorality.