Nawaz Sharif lifts moratorium in place since 2008 in response to Taliban atrocity that left 132 children and nine teachers dead

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has ordered a moratorium on the death penalty to be lifted for terror-related cases as families in Peshawar bury the 141 victims of the Taliban school attack.

With the country beginning three days of mourning, the army’s chief of staff, Raheel Sharif, headed to Kabul for talks with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, over tackling the senior Tehreek-e-Taliban members hiding on the Afghanistan side of the border.

His top prioritywill almost certainly be to secure Afghanistan’s cooperation in capturing Mullah Fazlullah, the Pakistan Taliban’s leader.

Responding to revulsion in Pakistan at the the atrocity, which left 132 schoolchildren dead, the prime minister approved an end to the death penalty moratorium, which was introduced in 2008, for terror-related cases.

The move came after he chaired a meeting in Peshawar to discuss how to respond to the attack.

The moratorium applied only to civilians, and a soldier was executed in 2012. Hanging remains on the statute book and judges have continued to pass sentence, leaving about 8,000 people on death row.

The prime minister also echoed army commanders’ vows to step up military action against Taliban strongholds in the federally administered tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Some of the dead were buried overnight, but most of the funerals were to be held on Wednesday. Nine members of the school’s staff were also killed. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded.

The school is run by the army, and many of the parents are military personnel.

The father of one of the children, Akhtar Hussain, a labourer who said he had worked for years in Dubai to provide for his family, told the Associated Press: “They finished in minutes what I had lived my whole life for, my son.”

As he buried 14-year-old Fahad, he said: “That innocent one is now gone in the grave, and I can’t wait to join him. I can’t live anymore.”

As outrage and horror were expressed around the world, it remains to be seen whether the massacre will mark a turning-point in Pakistan’s ambiguous approach to militant extremists.

Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, has at times denounced the Pakistan Taliban while supporting its Afghan counterpart in an effort to offset growing Indian influence in Kabul. It has also supported violent Kashmiri separatist groups responsible for terrorist attacks in India.

The speed with which the army’s chief of staff decided to visit Kabul is significant, raising the question of whether Pakistan is finally prepared to work with the new Afghan president, not only to tackle Pakistan Taliban members hiding out in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, but also Afghan Taliban operating from the Pakistan side of the border.

Seven members of the Pakistan Taliban wearing suicide vests scaled the school wall on Tuesday morning before opening fire on students and teachers. The siege lasted about eight hours, with commandos killing some of the attackers, while others blew themselves up.

Students said that female teachers were doused in petrol and burned alive.

Journalists allowed entry to the school on Wednesday reported seeing broken glass, rubble, children’s shoes and pools of blood in an auditorium where the army said about 100 of the victims had been killed.

An army spokesman, Maj Gen Asim Bajwa, who showed journalists round the school, said the body of the principal, Tahira Qazi, had been found among the debris. She had locked herself in a bathroom but the Taliban threw a grenade into a vent, he said.