Taliban killers convicted in seemingly sham trial
In a country like Pakistan where men, women and even children are routinely attacked with impunity with the perpetrators rarely being punished, it is heartwarming to see the group that attacked teen activist Malala Yousafzai being convicted in a court of law. However, there are many question marks over the validity of the trial. There is not much detail available in the public domain about the trial and whatever little information has been supplied by the Pakistani authorities seems suspicious. For example, the list of people convicted does not match the list of people previously identified as Ms Yousafzai's attackers. Even local journalists were reportedly surprised to hear of the verdict, which was delivered behind closed doors.
There is ample reason to believe that the entire trial and conviction was a show put up to please the international community. That said, it must be underlined that few, within or outside Pakistan, could have predicted that the Taliban members, who pumped bullets into the then-14-year-old's head for daring to go to school, would ever be held accountable or that even a sham trial would ever be held.
After all, this is a country that is yet to bring to justice those who masterminded the attack on its first Prime Minister, liaquat Ali Khan. Only the man who pulled the trigger, a professional hitman, was shot dead on the spot. This was in 1951. Fifty-six years later, in the same park where Khan was killed, Benazir Bhutto was shot dead. The former Prime Minister had just returned from exile and was campaigning for another chance at the top job. It has been almost eight years since that assassination and there is no clarity on who killed Bhutto. In 2011, the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer was assassinated by his own bodyguard. The assassin surrendered immediately and was convicted within months.
Four years later, he is yet to be hanged. Taseer was killed for speaking out against Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws, and weeks later, so was his party colleague Shahbaz Bhatti, then the Minister for Minority Affairs and the country's only Christian parliamentarian. Bhatti's killers are yet to be caught. These are just a handful of Pakistan political leaders whose killers have not yet been given the punishment they deserve. Add to this list the many social activists, journalists, scholars, teachers and intellectuals, not to mention the hundreds of common Pakistanis, who have been attacked but are yet to receive justice, and it is astonishing, even if pleasantly so, that a conviction has been secured in Ms Yousafzai's case.