Malala Yousafzai, an education and women’s rights activist from Pakistan, meets with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on August 18, 2014 in New York City. Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Pakistani police announced on Friday that despite reportedly admitting to their crimes, eight out of the 10 men that were charged with planning the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai in 2012 were released from jail.
All 10 men confessed in court that they were part of the Pakistani Taliban plot to kill Yousafzai, but police freed eight of them because of a supposed lack of proof, Reuters reported.
In April 2015, a police official told the Associated Press that all 10 men had been convicted on terrorism charges in a closed trial and each sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Authorities now say that only two of the men were convicted, and the rest were freed on April 30. Their whereabouts are currently unknown.
Authorities haven’t commented on why this misinformation was never corrected, even as media outlets around the world reported it.
Many trials in Pakistan are held in secret locations without media disclosure, because of threats from militants, according to Reuters.
Yousafzai, an avid advocate for the education of women and girls and now the world’s youngest Nobel Peace prize winner, was shot in the head on her way home from school in Pakistan one October afternoon in 2012.
She was airlifted to the UK for medical care and now lives there with her family.
The Taliban immediately took credit for the attack, and the gunmen were widely believed to have fled to Afghanistan, as per the BBC’s reporting.
The post Men who planned attack against Malala go free in Pakistan appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
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