Eight of the 10 men convicted and jailed for the shooting of Malala Yousafzai were cleared of all charges, officials said Friday.
The 10 men, Pakistani Taliban militants, attempted to kill Yousafzai, a Pakistani schoolgirl activist, by shooting her in the head as she boarded her school bus in October 2012. The attack garnered global attention, and Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize Laureate in 2014.
The men were found guilty over the “planning and execution” of the attack by anti-terrorism judge Mohammed Amin Kundi in April after their arrest last fall, who sentenced each of them to 25 years in jail.
But Salim Marwat, a police chief in Pakistan’s Swat Valley where Malala was shot, told NBC News that “eight people have been freed due to lack of proper proof and evidence against them.” Marwat also told AFP he has “no knowledge where the eight persons are now — either in military custody or released.”
Syed Naeem Khan, a prosecutor who worked on the case, said all 10 “confessed to their roles in the shooting before the judge.” However, after appealing the guilty verdict, eight were cleared.
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, in addition to with Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah, who ordered the attack.
