Pakistan: Eight out of 10 convicted Malala attackers were actually 'secretly acquitted' BBC reports

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Muneer Ahmed, a spokesman for the Pakistani High Commission in London, said on Friday that the eight men were acquitted because of a lack of evidence.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: BBC News Asia / BuzzFeed
By Staff report | June 5, 2015

[Adopted from the BBC and BuzzFeed report excerpts]

Eight of the 10 men reportedly convicted of the attempted assassination of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, a well-known education activist from Pakistan, were later secretly acquitted, the BBC has reported.

In April, a Pakistani ant-terrorism court judge sentenced the Taliban militants to 25 years in prison after finding them guilty of planning and carrying out the attack on the teenage activist, it was reported in the media.

However, according to the BBC report, sources have now confirmed that only two of the men who stood trial remain convicted.

According to prosecutor Syed Naeem Khan, it was reported by BuzzFeed, that all 10 had “confessed to their roles in the shooting before the judge.”

The secrecy surrounding the trial, which was held behind closed doors, raised suspicions over its validity, the BBC report said.

The report further said that according to the court judgement - revealed for the first time more than a month after the trial - the two men convicted were those who actually shot Ms Yousafzai in 2012.

However it was previously reported that that both the gunmen and the man who ordered the attack were at large somewhere in Afghanistan.

"Muneer Ahmed, a spokesman for the Pakistani High Commission in London, said on Friday that the eight men were acquitted because of a lack of evidence," the BBC report said. "Saleem Marwat, the district police chief in Swat, Pakistan, separately confirmed that only two men had been convicted."



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