Contrary to earlier reports that all 10 accused were jailed, court papers reveal only two were given 25-year jail terms – including one who fired at the schoolgirl

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Pakistani officials confirmed on Friday that only two men have been convicted for the attempted killing of the education activist Malala Yousafzai, not 10 as lawyers from her home region of Swat had initially claimed.

Although 10 men stood trial, only two were jailed for their role in shooting the Nobel laureate as she sat in a school bus in October 2012.

In April this year, members of the legal community in Mingora, the capital of Swat, claimed all 10 had been sentenced to 25-year jail terms – a claim that garnered positive global headlines for a country that has long struggled against Islamist militancy.

At the time, one army official in Swat, who spoke anonymously to the Guardian, contradicted the claims by several lawyers, insisting only two men had been convicted.

Officials say the lawyers who spread the claim had not been inside the secretive, military-run court at the time of the hearing and had simply assumed all of the suspects had been jailed.

Neither the army nor the government made any attempt to correct the public record at the time.

The army has played a major role in the security of Swat ever since a military operation was launched in 2009 to roll back a Taliban takeover of the valley.

On Friday, an army officer said the military believed there had been enough evidence to convict all of the men, but eight of them were acquitted because of what he called the longstanding weaknesses of Pakistan’s judicial system.

He said witnesses were intimidated into not giving evidence and the court dropped many of the charges against them, including the plot to kill Yousafzai.

The officer strongly denied claims made by the Daily Mirror that any of the men had been released. He said they were still being held and would be brought back to court at a later date after a fresh case had been built against them.

The 10 men arrested in September last year, in an operation involving multiple security agencies, were accused of being part of a group tasked by Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah with killing a series of high-profile people, including Yousafzai.

Court papers further contradict information given in April about the men who were convicted, neither of whom were thought at the time to be the actual culprits of the attempted murder.

But the judgment said the two convicted men had approached the minivan in which Yousafzai was sitting with her classmates, before one opened fire on her.

The teenager survived the gunshot to her head after undergoing an emergency operation in Pakistan and later being moved to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham.

In October last year, she became the youngest winner of a Nobel peace prize for her work campaigning for the right of children to education.