Three arrested in shooting of 14-year-old Pakistani girl
Three suspects have been arrested in the shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai.
According to NBC News, the suspects are from 17 to 22 years old and they stated the man who organized the attacks is names Attaullah.
Swat police chief Gul Afzal Afridi stated, “During raids in Swat on Thursday night, we captured three culprits involved in attack on Malala,” he also said, “During initial interrogation, they revealed that Attaullah was mastermind of the attack and he is still at large.”
The attackers are from the area of Sangota of Swat and police are currently raiding more places in order to find Attaullah. The Swat Taliban will not comment if anyone has been arrested but they did state that they had many of trained gunmen in the area.
“We had no intentions to kill her but were forced when she would not stop (speaking against us),” said Sirajuddin Ahmad, a Swat Taliban spokesman.
He had also stated the Taliban held a meeting a few months ago and they agreed to kill her.
The school Yousufzai attends, which is owned and operated by her father, reopend Friday. Police are patrolling around the school.
“We have decided to open the school after two days to overcome the fear among our students that gripped them due to the attack. The number of students is low today. We have not resumed regular teaching activity, but held an assembly to pray for Malala and the other two injured girls,” said teacher Zafar Ali Khan.
Yousufzai has been blogging against the Taliban. The gunmen stopped a van that was driving Yousufzai and two other girls’ home from school. The men asked which girl was Malala and then began to open fire. Yousufzai is in stable condition but the bullet is lodged in her neck. The two girls have injuries that are not life threatening, according to CNN.
Yousufzai began blogging because of the Taliban’s restriction on education for females in her town. She wrote about the day-to-day battles of dealing with the Taliban and their restrictions.
Yousafzai was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011 for her writings. She started being noticed in 2009 when she started her writings under the BBC’s Urdu service. In 2011 the Pakistan government gave her 1 million rupee ($10,500) in prize money for her braveness along with a peace award, according to Washington Post.
