Pakistan president rejects school attackers’ mercy pleas

KARACHI, Pakistan

Pakistan’s President Mamnoon Hussein rejected the mercy petitions of four militants found guilty of orchestrating a gun and bomb attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in December.

The massacre left more than 140 people dead, mostly children. All four convicts were sentenced to death by a military court in August.

“The brutal and merciless killing of our children convinced us that the perpetrators of such crimes do not deserve any mercy,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said earlier this week.

The government had lifted a six-year de facto ban on the death penalty after the Peshawar school massacre. Over 200 convicts have been hanged since then.