2014 PESHAWAR SCHOOL MASSACRE (DECEMBER 16, 2014)

INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Peshawar_school_massacre

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.rte.ie/news/world/2015/1202/750625-peshawar/

Four executed by hanging over school massacre

Wednesday 02 December 2015 13.11

  

Hundreds had protested outside a Pakistani school over the 'sluggish' investigation into the 2014 attack

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.rte.ie/news/world/2015/1202/750625-peshawar/]

Four men have been executed in Pakistan over their involvement in the killing of 134 children at an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar last year, media and security sources said.

The hangings were the first executions of civilians convicted by Pakistan's military courts, which were set up after the attack through a constitutional amendment.         

The executions were confirmed by three security sources, two of whom are based in Kohat, where the men were hanged early this morning at the city's civilian-run central jail.      

Hazrat Ali, Mujeeb ur Rehman, Sabeel and Abdus Salam had been convicted on 13 August, according to a military statement. All were identified as members of the Toheedwal Jihad Group, a previously unheard of faction of the Pakistani Taliban.   

     

Three others were also sentenced to death for involvement in the attack, according to the same military statement, but death warrants have not yet been issued for them. 

  

All nine attackers were killed in the siege on Peshawar's Army Public School, which killed 151 people in total on 16 December, 2014. It was the worst Taliban attack on Pakistani soil.

The attack shocked and outraged the country, already scarred by nearly a decade of unrest.

It prompted a crackdown on extremism, with the establishment of military courts and the resumption of capital punishment after a six-year moratorium. 

"The rest should be caught too, no one should be spared," survivor Waheed Anjum, 18, said.

Anjum, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was struck by three bullets, one in each arm and one in his chest. 

"They shouldn't have been hanged from prisons, they should have been hanged from squares," his father added. 

"There is no forgiveness in our hearts after what they did to our children."

"The hangings won't bring back my son, but now other people's sons will be kept safer," said another father, who lost one son in the attack while another was wounded.