Pakistan Court Jails 10 Over Malala Yousafzai Attack

malala

A court in north-west Pakistan has jailed 10 men for life for the attack on education activist Malala Yousafzai. BBC covered the proceeding:

Ms Yousafzai, who was 15 at the time, was shot in the head on board her school bus in the Swat valley in 2012, in an attack that shocked the world. She was awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning for children’s rights, despite the risk to her life. Officials say the 10 men, who do not include the man named as chief suspect, belonged to the Pakistani Taliban.

Ataullah Khan, a 23-year-old militant, was identified by a police report at the time of the shooting – but he did not appear in the list of 10 men convicted on Thursday. They were tried in an anti-terrorist court in Swat.

Also not included in the list of the 10 sentenced, according to an unnamed security official quoted by Reuters, were the gunmen who boarded the bus and shot Malala. The exact charges the men faced remain unclear. A lawyer from the local District Bar Association told the BBC that this was “not an open hearing”.