[NATION.PK] Eight of the 10 men reportedly placed in durance vileInto the paddy wagon wit' yez!
for the attempted liquidation of Pak schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai
...a Pashtun blogger and advocate for girls' education from Mingora, in Swat. She started blogging at age 11-12. She was 15 when a Talib boarded her school bus and shot her in the head in 2012. She was evacuated to a hospital in Britain and the Pak Taliban vowed to kill her and her father. Among other awards, she received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, which she deserved more than Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, or Rigoberta Menchu...
were actually set free, it has emerged.
In April, officials said that 10 Taliban fighters had been found guilty and received 25-year jail terms. But sources have now confirmed that only two of the men who stood trial were convicted.
The secrecy surrounding the trial, which was held behind closed doors, raised suspicions over its validity. The court judgement - seen for the first time on Friday more than a month after the trial - claims that the two men convicted were those who shot Ms Yousafzai in 2012.
It was previously thought that both the gunnies and the man who ordered the attack had fled to Afghanistan.
Muneer Ahmed, a front man for the Pak High Commission in London, said on Friday that the eight men were acquitted because of a lack of evidence.
Saleem Marwat, the district police chief in Swat, Pakistain, separately confirmed that only two men had been convicted.
Mr Ahmed claimed that the original court judgement made it clear only two men had been convicted and blamed the confusion on misreporting.
But Sayed Naeem, a public prosecutor in Swat, told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named news agency after the trial: "Each murderous Moslem got 25 years in jail. It is life in prison for the 10 turbans who were tried by an anti-terrorist court." In Pakistain, a life sentence is 25 years.
The acquittals emerged after news hounds from the London-based Daily Mirror attempted to locate the 10 convicted men in prisons in Pakistain.