10 Militants Held in Shooting of Malala Yousafzai, Girls’ Education Advocate, Pakistan Says
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Version 0 of 1. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Ten militants have been taken into custody in connection with the 2012 shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a teenager who defied the Taliban with her outspoken calls for girls’ education, a spokesman for the Pakistani military said Friday. Ms. Yousafzai, who is now 17, was shot in the head by gunmen who attacked her school bus as she and her schoolmates were heading home in the Swat Valley, the picturesque northern region where the Taliban held sway until a military operation broke their hold in 2009. Two of Ms. Yousafzai’s classmates were also wounded. Ms. Yousafzai, who is studying in Britain, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 and has won several awards in recognition of her advocacy. The military spokesman, Maj. General Asim Saleem Bajwa, said the arrests were the product of a joint operation between the military intelligence agency and the police. He said the arrests had not come all at once, but did not say when they had happened, and it was unclear why the operation was being announced only on Friday. General Bajwa said the attackers had been under orders from Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the main Pakistani Taliban branch, when they attacked Ms. Yousafzai and the other students. He said the militants were based in Malakand and belonged to a group known as Shura. They were planning to kill 22 influential residents of Swat when they were arrested, he said. The main spokesman for the Taliban until recently, Ehsanullah Ehsan, called the army’s claim “black propaganda.” In a statement released after the military’s announcement, Mr. Ehsan also said that only three attackers had been involved in the schoolgirls’ shooting, with one killed in the time since, and that the decision to attack the bus was made unilaterally by the local militants, with senior Taliban officials being informed only after the fact. Taliban leaders came under intense criticism from many sectors of the Pakistani public for the attack on Ms. Yousafzai, and have tried to distance themselves from it. But on the day of the shooting, Mr. Ehsan quickly confirmed that Ms. Yousafzai had been singled out for attack, calling her pro-education campaign an “obscenity” and warning other advocates against promoting Western culture, saying, “Let this be a lesson.” General Bajwa identified two of the militants being held as Israr ur Rehman and Izhar Ullah. Mr. Rehman was said to be the first to be arrested, and his interrogation led to the arrest of others in the group. “The weapons used in these incidents have also been recovered,” the military spokesman said. “All terrorists will be produced before Antiterrorist Court and would be tried under Antiterrorism Act.” |