10 Men Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison For Shooting of Malala Yousafzai

A Pakistani court sentenced 10 men to 25 years in prison each this week for their connection in the 2012 shooting of teenager Malala Yousafzai, who has become an outspoken proponent for children's education around the world.

The ten Taliban-affiliated men were accused of targeting Yousafzai, who was 15 at the time of the attack, because she had been writing for a blog and decrying the Taliban's influence on her town in the Swat Valley, as well as calling for girls' right to education in Pakistan.

Yousafzai was shot at three times while traveling home from school in 2012, with one bullet striking her in the head. She eventually recovered from her injuries and has since become an outspoken international proponent of education for children, especially girls.

"Judge Mohammad Amin Kundi in his verdict gave 25 years jail to all of these people," a court official told Reuters of this week's ruling.

As CNN notes, Pakistan's branch of the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the 2012 attack against Yousafzai, saying that the teenage girl serves as "a symbol of the infidels and obscenity" for her outspoken beliefs regarding education.

In 2014, Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism work in advocating equal education rights to all children, especially women, in all parts of the world.

According to The Guardian, Yousafzai has previously spoken about the importance of education growing up in Pakistan's Swat Valley.

"Education went from being a right to being a crime. Girls were stopped from going to school," she said. "When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed, too. I had two options: one was to remain silent and wait to be killed and the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one; I decided to speak up."