Six militants to hang for December 2014 attack on Pakistan school
14 Aug 2015
Six militants who plotted and aided Pakistan's worst ever terrorist attack at a Peshawar school will be hanged after army chief general Raheel Sharif confirmed their death sentences (See: Peshawar in tears, Pak in mourning after Taliban kills 132 kids).
The men, belonging to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, were convicted last evening for their role in the December 2014 massacre at Peshawar's Army Public School (APS) in which 151 people, including 141 children, were killed, The Nation reported.
The convicted persons drove the killers who stormed into the school, fired indiscriminately from machine guns and went about shooting children and teachers cowering in their classrooms.
Though security forces killed the gunmen, the attack however left Pakistan in a deep shock and provoked international outrage.
Those who aided and abetted them were convicted for their role in this and other attacks in special military courts, set up to fast-track terrorist cases, earlier this year.
Their death sentences, were however, delayed due to a legal challenge to the constitutional amendment under which the military courts were established.
The Supreme Court rejected the challenge last week and upheld the 21st Amendment and the military courts created under the Pakistan Army (Amendment) Act 2015.
The army said in a statement that another militant was sentenced to life in prison, adding six were members of the militant group Tawhid-wal-Jihad, while the other two were from the Pakistani Taliban and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
The sentences were confirmed by army chief general Raheel Sharif, but it was not clear when they would be carried out.
Tawhid-wal-Jihad was founded in the late 1990s by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who later led al-Qaida's Iraq affiliate, a precursor of the Islamic State group, before he was killed in a US airstrike in 2006.
According to Pakistan's military, the men belonging to Tawhid-wal-Jihad played a major role in planning and facilitating the school attack and several others. The school attack was however claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, a homegrown militant group.
