Execution orders for APS abettors endorsed

ISLAMABAD: Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif has endorsed the execution of four ‘hardcore terrorists’ involved in the Peshawar school massacre of last December.

On Monday, General Raheel Sharif signed the black warrants of the convicted militants named Abdus Salam Shamsi, Hazrat Ali, Mujeebur Rehman and Sabeel. The convicts will now be hanged to death, according to the military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The move came after President Mamnoon Hussain rejected the clemency appeals of the convicts on the premier’s advice on November 20.

The militants were sentenced to death by military courts, which were established under a revised anti-terror policy following the Peshawar massacre. Taliban militants had stormed the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, and killed over 130 schoolchildren.

The carnage forced the government to set up military courts, as part of the National Action Plan (NAP), for trying terrorists under amendments made to the constitution and the army act.

This is the army chief’s first such endorsement since the Supreme Court gave legal cover to the establishment of military courts in August 2015.

According to the charge-sheet shared by the ISPR, all four convicts were members of the Tawheed wal Jihad (TWJ) group

Abdus Salam was accused of harbouring the suicide bombers, who later attacked the Army Public School. He was also convicted for involvement in the murder of two colonels and a civilian director of the National Development Complex.

The second convict, Hazrat Ali, was involved in attacking law enforcement agencies personnel, abetment in kidnapping and killing of Levies soldiers and fundraising for the Peshawar school attack.

Mujeeb and Sabeel were convicted for their involvement in transporting 10 suicide bombers for the attack on the Pakistan Air Force base in Peshawar, attacking police check posts and abetment in the Peshawar school attack.

Since the establishment of military courts, 27 terrorists have been handed down death sentences on different counts.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2015.