[ABC.NET.AU] A Pak court has tossed in the slammerDon't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
10 men for life for their involvement in the 2012 shooting of teenage activist 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...
, who was targeted for her campaign against the Taliban denying girls education.
Pak Talibs grabbed credit for attacking Malala as she travelled home from school in the town of Swat, northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
"Ten attackers who were involved in the attack on Malala Yousafzai have been sentenced to life imprisonment," a court official told AFP news agency. Life prison sentences in Pakistain are 25 years.
News of the sentencing was confirmed by a lawyer present at the hearing in the north-western town of Mingora, as well as a security official.
They were the first convictions for the attack.
A security official said none of the four or five men who carried out the attack on Malala were among the 10 men sentenced.
"But certainly they had a role in the planning and execution of the liquidation attempt on Malala," said a police official in Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The man suspected of actually firing the gun at Malala, named by officials as Ataullah Khan, is believed to be on the run in Afghanistan, along with Pak Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
, who ordered the attack.
Pakistain's military announced the arrest of the 10 suspects in September 2014 as part of an operation that involved the army, police and intelligence agencies.
The army front man Asim Bajwa said the group had a hitlist of 22 targets in addition to Malala, all ordered by Fazlullah.