Four men hanged for 2014 attack on Peshawar army school

“Four militants involved in the attack on the APS school were hanged this morning in Kohat prison”, said a Peshawar security official.

A security official confirmed the orders of the four terrorists.

The move came after President Mamnoon Hussain rejected clemency appeals of the four convicts on receiving Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s advice for the same on November 20.

Army Chief General Raheel Sharif signed the death warrants on Monday, removing the last legal hurdle to their execution.

In the wake of the APS carnage, military courts were set up for trying terrorists under amendments made to the Constitution and the Army Act. The attack by Taliban gunmen on the army-run school in Peshawar, considered to be the country’s deadliest extremist attack, killed 150 people, mostly children.

The militants’ bodies will be handed over to the families shortly, a Kohat police official said. The men were tried in a military court and were accused of aiding and abetting militants who were killed during the attack.

Hazrat Ali was convicted of involvement in collecting funds to carry out the school attack. All have been identified as members of the Toheedwal Jihad Group (TWG), a previously unprecedented faction of the Pakistani Taliban. He admitted his offences before the magistrate and the trail court. He was found involved in transporting 10 suicide bombers for the attack on Pakistan Air Force Base Peshawar. Besides establishment of military courts, the massacre had also prompted a military crackdown on militants in tribal regions of North Waziristan and Khyber and the resumption of capital punishment after a six-year moratorium.