Disclaimer: Due to the limitations placed on much of the information relating to the attack, we simply cannot provide the absolute complete picture. This is, however, an attempt to collate and process as much information there is in the public domain, in order to give you an idea of the authorities’ response to the attack.

The message was clear. The battle lines had been drawn and there was no going back. The Army Public School (APS) massacre appeared to provide that rare moment of clarity to a nation that had always tippy-toed around the threat of religious fanaticism — no more calls for dialogue and engagement; no more politics of appeasement; no longer would violence be allowed to simmer at the peripheries so long as it didn’t boil over into the mainstream. There would now be no distinction between the good and bad Taliban, vowed voices from the power corridor.

Just over a week after the attack, claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) the PML-N federal government signed off on the National Action Plan — introducing a series of kinetic and non-kinetic measures to counter terrorism, one of which was the decision to try terrorists in military courts.

While there was precedence for military trials for civilians at different times in Pakistan’s history, this was perhaps the first time that there was overarching consensus to their deployment.

Another major move was the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty. As a result, almost six months after the APS attack, the military’s media wing announced on August 13, 2015, that the chief of army staff had confirmed the death sentences of six terrorists involved in the attack. The same communique added that one terrorist had also been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The investigation

The information presented in this section has been pieced together from various sources, including but not limited to the 525-page APS commission report, available with Dawn.com, news reports from various publications as well as the testimonies of survivors and parents.

According to the APS commission report, the terrorists entered Peshawar from across the border “through conventional means, without the use of any cellular or modern device”. They spent the night prior to the attack at a mosque near school, where they were facilitated by the Imam.

At 10:15am on December 16, the terrorists set ablaze a stolen vehicle at a distance of around 1 kilometre from APS Peshawar. The investigators later concluded that this was meant to be a distraction to draw away one of the two Mobile Vigilance Team (MVT) that was patrolling the area outside the APS. Subsequently, the seven terrorists, later identified as Abuzar, Omar, Imran, Aziz, Qari, Yousaf and Chamnay alias Chamtoo, scaled the wall near Gate 2 at the rear of the school and made their way to the auditorium where students had gathered for a workshop on first aid.

Inside the auditorium, all hell broke loose as the terrorists opened indiscriminate fire on the students. According to then DG ISPR Asim Saleem Bajwa, who addressed a press conference the next day, “… they [the terrorists] did not want to take any hostages.”

In fact, by most accounts, the terrorists had inflicted the majority of the casualties within the first 15 minutes of the attack as they rushed through the auditorium and the adjoining building of the senior block. The terrorists then made their way to the administration block and the college building, where students were appearing for exams, killing anyone who came in their path.

According to the DG ISPR, a Quick Response Force (QRF) of the Pakistan Army had reached the school within 15 minutes of the attack. Investigators believe the resistance put up by the QRF and a second MVT, aided by the KP Police’s Rapid Response Force, as well as commados from the 7 Commando Battalion, managed to stop the terrorists from causing more damage, otherwise the death toll would have been much higher. The law enforcers managed to restrict the terrorists’ movement to the admin block.

Meanwhile, SSG commandos from the Zarrar Force stationed at Tarbela arrived at around 1:30pm. After being briefed on the situation, the commandos moved in to kill the terrorists and rescue the staff and students stuck inside the admin block, finally managing to succeed in the operation by around 5:20pm. The school was declared clear of all threats by 8pm, later that evening.

During the operation, which lasted around seven hours, three army personnel were martyred and another 12 were injured, according to the commission report.

Of the seven terrorists who had entered the school, one of the attackers was killed at the door of the auditorium, while three others were sniped through the windows of the administration block, the DG ISPR told the press conference the next day. The remaining three terrorists were killed as the security forces stormed the admin block, he added.

Following the attack, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of the KP Police registered an FIR, no. 72, under sections 302, 324, 353, 148, 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code, read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Subsequently, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was constituted to investigate the attack. The TTP had already claimed responsibility for the attack by sending messages to all mainstream news channels at around noon on Dec 16. Besides, security agencies had also intercepted communications between the terrorists at the school and their handlers.

For the next month or so, the JIT worked on different leads and managed to implicate the following persons in the case on January 23, 2015.

TTP Commander Mullah Fazalullah
Aurangzeb
Omar Khan
Commander Hafiz Saeed
Hafiz Daulat
Qari Saifullah
Qari Shakeel
Molvi Faqir
Hafiz Gul Bahadur
Arif alias Abuzar
Mangal Bagh
Ajnabi
Aslam Farooqui
Commander Sheikh Khalid Haqqani
Jan Wali, alias Sheena
Sarwar Shah
Atiq ur Rehman
Sabeel alias Yahya
Abdul Salam
Hazrat Ali
Kifayatullah alias Kaif Qari
Mujeeb ur Rehman alias Najeeb Ullah
Taj Muhammad

In all, of the 27-member terrorist cell that was identified as being responsible for the APS massacre, a security source told Dawn.com, seven were killed during the operation at the school, 12 were arrested (seven of whom were awarded the death sentence, one life imprisonment), while another nine were killed in operations around the country.

On July 13, 2016, the then DG ISPR informed that the Commander of the Resolute Support Mission General John Nicholson had called COAS Raheel Shareef and confirmed the death of Umar Naray, alias Khalifa Umar Mansoor, alias Khalid Khurasani, in a drone strike in Afghanistan. Khalifa Umar Mansoor was believed to be the mastermind of the APS attack and had claimed responsibility for the attack by making calls to journalists in Peshawar.

Besides, the military conducted its own investigations into the conduct of personnel during the attack and took action against 15 personnel, five of whom were dismissed from service, five others imprisoned for 28 days and the remaining given reprimands of different severities.

The quest for answers

Even as the law enforcement agencies apprehended or killed the perpetrators and facilitators of the APS massacre, many of the victims’ families felt it was too little, too late. As the days turned into weeks and then months, the families grew increasingly agitated over what they perceived to be a lack of accountability of those who had been responsible for the school’s security. And when they found no answers forthcoming, they knocked on the courts’ doors. Again and again. And again.

2015

A few months after the attack, the Peshawar High Court Bar Association (PHCBA) approached the Peshawar High Court (PHC), seeking financial support for the treatment of injured APS students.

The petitioner, then PHCBA president Mohammad Issa Khan, also prayed the court to ask the APS administration not to ‘waste’ the money collected through donations on the construction of unnecessary monuments and blocks inside or outside the school, and instead, spend the same for the welfare of the schoolchildren, particularly for the rehabilitation of the injured victims.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Mohammad Daud Khan, directed the respondents, including the federal and provincial governments and the APS administration, to file replies. No further documentation of the case could be found.

2016

In March 2016, lawyer Ajoon Khan, father of Asfand Khan who was martyred in the APS attack, approached the PHC on behalf of 30 mothers of martyred students, seeking directives to make all information relating to the attack public.

Despite repeated court orders, however, the KP government and police failed to submit the investigation record for several months. In fact, at one point, the court grew so irate that it ordered the suspension of salaries of the KP home secretary and the provincial police chief for not submitting their replies.

In February 2018, the CTD — which was investigating the case — finally submitted the record of the investigation to the PHC.

At the same time, the PHC bench, comprising then chief justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Syed Afsar Shah, turned down the petitioner’s request to order a judicial inquiry into the incident, observing that it was the mandate of the provincial government to take such a decision. The court added, however, that it would forward the petition to the government with a request to take a decision on the demand for such an inquiry.

While Ajoon Khan’s petition was being heard in court, Advocate Fazal Khan, the father of martyred student Omer Khan, also approached the PHC, requesting that the court order the inclusion of provisions of the law related to criminal negligence in the FIR registered at the CTD police station. Advocate Fazal* also requested the court to order the CTD to record his statement in the FIR, claiming that he had personally gone to the CTD police station several times but they had declined to record his statement.

2018

In 2018, the Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the parents’ complaints and initiated proceedings into the APS attack case — more on that below.

Also in 2018, in January, Advocate Fazal Khan* approached the PHC once again, insisting that the fibreglass monument set up to honour the martyred students outside the Peshawar Archives Library didn’t adequately represent the children’s sacrifice.

In its verdict announced on March 31, the court granted Fazal Khan’s request, rejecting the monument’s design and ordering the Peshawar Development Authority and the archives department to engage a competent architect to prepare a new design.

In July 2018, another petition, this time filed by Ajoon Khan and other parents, sought the court’s directives for the government to provide them with a similar compensation package as the one granted to the martyred APS staffers, including the school’s principal Tahira Qazi, or the one that had been provided to the families of lawyers who had been martyred in a terrorist attack at a hospital in Quetta in Aug 2016.

Advocate Mohammad Ayaz, appearing for the petitioners, contended that the compensation package awarded to the aggrieved parents included a payment of Rs2 million along with an Umra trip, which was too nominal keeping in view the brutal nature of the incident. He pointed out that the aggrieved families of the school’s staff members killed in the incident were awarded Rs9.4m.

The bench found that there had indeed been discrimination in the announcement of compensation packages by the provincial government, ordering the latter to increase the compensation amount for the martyred students’ parents as soon as possible.

*Fazal Khan survived an attempt on his life on July 21, 2020, when two motorcyclists opened fire on him as he was on his way home from the PHC premises. He relocated abroad later that year.

2021

In 2021, the parents of several martyred students approached the PHC, this time asking it to instruct the authorities to allow them to hold a scheduled seminar on Dec 15 at the APS Shuhada Hall of the archives department.

The court disposed of the petition on December 14, 2021, after the district administration informed that it had issued the NOC.

2022

In July 2022, the mothers of five martyred students also turned to the PHC, seeking the court’s directives to stop the government from “taking any step of reconciliation with the outfit [TTP] without taking them into confidence”.

The petitioners included Falak Naz, mother of students Noorullah and Saifullah, Shahana, mother of Asfand Khan, Seema, mother of Aimal Khan, and Zulaikha, mother of teacher Sadia Gul.

Advocate Ajoon Khan, who appeared on behalf of the petitioners, contended that the government’s move to negotiate with the terror outfit without addressing their [the parents’] grievances would be a travesty of justice.

On July 28, 2022, a two-member PHC bench, comprising Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Shahid Khan, rejected the parents’ petition.

Enter the apex court (2018 — present)

Even as these battles were being contested in court, the parents didn’t believe they were any closer to getting justice for their martyred children.

On April 19, 2018, when a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by then CJP Saqib Nisar was hearing cases in the apex court’s Peshawar Registry, the parents of APS victims, carrying pictures of their slain sons, stood up in a jam-packed courtroom.

Waseem Ahmed Shah, a journalist affiliated with Dawn, was present in the courtroom that day. He recalls that Shahana Ajoon, mother of Asfand Khan, started crying in the courtroom.

Shahana said she had never even hit her son but the terrorists had fired six bullets at him, adding that for the last three years, they had been moving from pillar to post seeking justice but in vain.

The parents complained before the bench that several weeks before that tragic incident, the authorities were alerted by the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) regarding the terrorists’ plans to attack an army-run educational institution — however, they said, no steps were taken to avert the attack.

They demanded an impartial judicial inquiry to affix responsibility of negligence on the officials concerned. “You have been bestowed the responsibility of dispensation of justice by Almighty Allah and if you fail in providing us justice, you will be answerable on the Day of Judgment,” said one of the mothers, adding that her only son was killed by terrorists in the attack and she still did not know who was responsible for his murder, Waseem Shah recalled. Another mother, between sobs, asked the CJP if he could bring her son back only for a moment so that she could hug him.

This is how the matter landed at the Supreme Court.

The next month, on May 9, 2018, CJP Nisar ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident. During the hearing at the SC’s Peshawar Registry, the bench directed the PHC chief justice to appoint a judge of the high court for the inquiry, adding that the commission must complete the inquiry within two months.

When Justice Mansoor Ali Shah announced the order, several mothers present in the courtroom burst into tears. However, the formation of the commission took another few months until October 5, 2015, when the SC took up the hearing of the suo motu petition.

“Having considered the grievances of the petitioners, we find it expedient that a commission be constituted to probe the attack on the Army Public School, Peshawar. Therefore, the registrar of the learned Peshawar High Court is directed to convey this order to the honourable Chief Justice Peshawar High Court to immediately constitute a commission comprising a senior judge of the PHC who shall conduct a thorough probe into the matter as per the grievances of the complainants which (commission) shall submit a report within six weeks from today,” the order by then CJP Nisar reads.

On October 12, 2018, the PHC registrar appointed Justice Muhammad Ibrahim Khan as the sole member of the commission that would investigate the APS massacre, ordering it to“submit a report within six weeks from the date of order, that is, October 5, 2018.“ Meanwhile, Inamullah Wazir was made the registrar of the commission while Ajmal Tahir appointed its secretary. Imranullah, another law officer, was made the commission’s focal person.

Subsequently, the commission started its work on October 29, 2018, and Advocate Ajoon Khan and his wife, Shahana Ajoon, were among the first parents to record their statements before it.

However, the investigation, which was initially scheduled to be completed within six weeks, dragged on for the next 24 months. The apparent cause of delay was the inability of some army officers to appear before the commission due to tensions at the Indo-Pak border.

The commission had sent a letter to the Ministry of Defence on Feb 11, 2019, to ensure the appearance of eight army officers before it for recording their statements in connection with the attack. In April 2019, it sent a reminder to the defence ministry, seeking information regarding the availability of the said military officers.

The officers later appeared before the commission and recorded statements regarding the carnage.

According to a statement available on the PHC website, Justice Muhammad Ibrahim Khan submitted the APS commission report to the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Gulzar Ahmed on July 9, 2020. Subsequently, the commission’s focal person told journalists that the report comprised around 3,000 pages [the original report comprised 525 pages excluding appendices] and carried statements of dozens of people as well as important documents related to the attack as well as the investigations that followed.

The focal person said that the probe body had recorded the statements of 132 people, of whom, 31 were police and army officials and the rest were witnesses, including injured students and parents of the martyred children.

The report and aftermath

In August 2020, the apex court resumed hearing in the APS suo motu case. On August 4, a two-member SC bench, headed by then CJP Justice Gulzar Ahmed directed the Attorney General of Pakistan Khalid Jawed Khan to appear before it after getting instructions from the federal government.

The next month, on September 25, a three-member SC bench, headed by CJP Gulzar Ahmed, directed the federal government to make the report public. At the time, however, only a small portion of 27 pages — the tables of contents, pages 170-178, which also comprised some parents’ statements and pages 523-525, which contained the end note — was shared with the media. The complete report, available with Dawn.com, provides a comprehensive overview of how the attack unfolded, the shortcomings on the part of the authorities, the investigation that followed and the parents’ grievances regarding various aspects of the incident and its aftermath.

“The entry of the terrorists from the cross-border (Afghanistan) till their infiltration into the doomed school’s perimeter befooling the security apparatus could be attributed to mainly the porous north-west border and Afghan refugees’ movement across the border in view of the understanding inter se the government and international agency regarding refugee’s unrestrained movement,” the report stated.

It added that above all, the assistance provided to the terrorists from residents of the locality, especially in this particular episode, “was palpable and unpardonable”.

“When one’s own blood and flesh commit treachery and betrayal, the result would always be devastating,” it stated, adding that no agency, no matter how capable or equipped, could effortlessly counter an attack “when infidels are within the inside”.

Detailing the “fiasco” in the school’s security apparatus, the inquiry commission said the number of static guards, which comprised the first tier of security, was “incomparable” to the looming threat. The guards’ improper position and accentuated main gates and front area compromised the school’s security from the back, from where the terrorists managed to enter “with no retaliation”.

“Equally incomprehensible is the inertia on part of the Askari Guards as well as the deputed static guards to the initial heavy firing and blasts by terrorists,” the report read. “Had they shown a little response and could engage the militants in the very beginning of the attack, the impact of the incident might have been lesser.”

The report also reflects the grievances of parents to this very effect — many of the parents decried before the commission that the operation was ‘considerably delayed’ owing to the ‘belated arrival’ of the Special Services Group (SSG) commandos without any plausible reason, which allowed the terrorists enough time to accomplish their plan of causing maximum damage in terms of loss of lives.

The parents also questioned how the terrorists were able to bring in such a huge cache of arms and ammunition, enabling them to engage in fighting till late hours of the day.

“Potent complaint is also made by most of the aggrieved that notwithstanding the arrival of the police at the site, they were not let to enter the premises, giving them skewed hope of safety of their children and that how come the combat operation evacuation activity could be conducted simultaneously,” the report added.

However, it noted that the terrorists’ movement towards the adjacent toddlers’ block of the school was restricted by soldiers of MVT-2 and QRF on their arrival. According to the report, the unit regulating MVT-1 has been handed down punishment by a “court of inquiry”.

The author of the report said although there was a “clandestine and somewhere failing agreement of views of the aggrieved/ complainants (parents of victims) relating to the incident … it is most probably because of the communication gap between them and the military which I believe must have abridged in due course of the proceedings before this commission”.

Today, the optimism appears premature with answers, let alone justice, still pending.

Maintaining status quo

Following the report being made public, the SC has only conducted two hearings of the suo motu case — one on October 20, 2021 and the second on November 20, 2021, when the then prime minister Imran Khan appeared before it on short notice.

During the hearing on October 20, the Attorney General submitted a report, containing details of the government’s efforts to comply with the commission’s recommendations regarding the provision of facilities to the families of martyred students and the injured. The court also took up the parents’ demand for the registration of FIRs against those who failed to perform their duty on the day of the attack.

“The mothers of the deceased children complain that no FIR has been registered against the persons, who were responsible for ensuring security at APS Peshawar. They state that persons sitting in high offices have not taken to the task nor have they been made responsible for neglecting their duty resulting in the deaths … innocent children,” reads the order authored by then CJP Gulzar Ahmed.

“The mothers complain that the then Army Chief General Raheel Sharif, the then Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the then chief minister KP Pervez Khattak, the then Peshawar Corps Commander Lieutenant General Hidayatur Rehman, the then ISI director-general Lieutenant General Zaheer ul Islam and the then interior secretary Akhtar Ali Shah, are the people who were at the helm of the affairs [and] ought to have known about the happening of the incident but they neglected in performance of their duty to the extent that the school children carnage happened,” the order added.

“The AG has been put on notice on the complaints and asked to take action, as required by the law, and if those who have been named are found guilty of negligence in the performance of their duties, necessary measures should be taken,” the order dictated by the chief justice reads.

On November 11, the court took up the matter for the last time when former premier Imran Khan appeared before the bench. According to the order issued on the day’s proceedings, the premier stated before the bench that the federal government was conscious of its responsibilities and taking all possible steps and actions to ensure the bereaved parents received proper justice and in doing so, those people who were responsible or those who had failed to perform their responsibilities were taken to task and were dealt in accordance with the law.

“The parents of the children are unable to accept the deaths of their children and squarely blame the persons who are noted in our order of October 20, 2021 for the dereliction of duties and performance of their function. Let positive steps be taken by the state/ federal government and in doing so the parents of innocent school children should be associated and heard,” read the order.

“This exercise will be done within a period of four weeks from today and a report signed by the Prime Minister will be placed before the court for consideration,” it added.

On December 9, instead of submitting the report, the government asked for three more weeks’ time. The court was informed that the premier has set up a four-member cabinet committee to meet the aggrieved parents and listen to their complaints. On January 13, 2022, the federal government again asked for a month’s time, this time informing the court that the cabinet committee had met the parents once and since the parents wanted to meet its members again, it should be granted four more weeks to furnish the report.

For his part, Advocate Ajoon Khan — one of the parents who met the committee’s members — told Dawn.com that the meeting between the parents and the government’s committee was held at the premises of the Shuhada APS Library in Peshawar.

The parents, he said, insisted on the registration of an FIR against the high-ups named in the SC order, and thus, the talks yielded no positive results. According to Advocate Ajoon, those responsible for the security breach at the APS were promoted to senior positions in the military. “We will not sit at ease till those responsible for the breach of security are held to account,” he said, adding that the case was stuck simply because there were too many senior officials responsible for dereliction of duty, therefore, the government was not interested in taking action against them.

Tahseenullah Durrani, who lost two sons in the APS massacre, told Dawn.com that during this time, the parents had even met the SC registrar and Ahsan Bhoon, the then president of the Supreme Court Bar Association in connection with the suo motu case, but all in vain. Besides, he said, they also met the SC registrar during CJP Isa’s tenure. He added that the case was scheduled to be heard on at least two occasions earlier this year, but it never made it to the courtroom.

With regards to the prolonged delay since the last hearing, Amanullah Kanrani, an SC lawyer and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) who was assisting the bench as amicus curiae during the proceedings, told Dawn.com that since it was a suo motu case, it was the SC’s mandate to hear it whenever it liked. He added that in the post 26th Amendment scenario, the newly set up Constitutional Bench would likely take up suo motu proceedings.

In the meantime, the families keep waiting.