A report issued by the Pakistani government has found that the killing of well-known journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya was premeditated murder. The report, issued by a government-led inquiry commission, found that Mr. Sharif was killed by a group of people who had planned and carried out the murder in a premeditated manner. The report also found that the murder was motivated by Mr. Sharif’s work as a journalist, and that the killers had been planning to murder him for some time.
The prominent Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was tragically shot and killed in Nairobi, Kenya in October. At the time of his death, Sharif was living in self-imposed exile in Kenya after fleeing his home country of Pakistan citing threats to his life. Kenyan officials have said that Sharif’s death was a case of mistaken identity, and that police officers who were hunting for car thieves opened fire on Sharif’s vehicle as it drove through a roadblock without stopping. Sharif’s death is a great loss for the journalism community, and highlights the dangers that journalists face when trying to report the truth in countries where press freedom is under threat.
A two-member fact-finding team from Pakistan that travelled to Kenya and conducted a number of interviews, examined and reconstructed the crime scene and trawled the deceased’s phones and computers, said in a 600-page report that Sharif’s killing was a pre-planned murder. The report said that there was a “clear and present danger” to Sharif’s life and that he had been on a “hit list”. The report also said that the Kenyan authorities had failed to protect Sharif and that they had not properly investigated his murder.
“Both the members of the [fact-finding team] have a considered understanding that it is a case of planned targeted assassination with transnational characters rather than a case of mistaken identity,” said the report, copies of which were submitted to Pakistan’s supreme court.
“It is more probable that the firing was done, after taking proper aim, at a stationary vehicle,” it said.
Kenyan authorities declined to comment on the specifics of the report.
“The investigation into the matter is still ongoing, so there is not much I can tell,” said Resila Onyango, a spokesperson for the Kenya National Police Service.
He said a multi-agency team was conducting the investigation, and would inform the authorities when it was completed.
Anne Makori, the chair of the Kenyan police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority, told Reuters investigations were ongoing.
Pakistan’s interior minister, Rana Sanaullah, had said before the release of the report that Sharif’s body had bruises and torture marks, suggesting it was a targeted killing.
The fact-finding team highlighted one wound in particular on Sharif’s back, saying it appeared to have been inflicted from relatively close range. The report noted there was no corresponding penetration mark of a bullet in the seat on which Sharif was sitting when the shooting purportedly took place, calling it a “ballistic impossibility”.
“The injury had to have been caused either before the journalist got into the vehicle, or the shot was fired from a relatively close range, possibly from inside the vehicle, and almost certainly not a moving vehicle,” the report said.
Sharif had fled Pakistan citing threats to his life after the government registered several treason cases against him. He had been living in self-imposed exile in London since November 2019. Sharif’s daughter and one of his sons, who also live in London, have been named in the warrants. It is not clear when or how the warrants will be carried out.
One of the cases stemmed from reporting Sharif did that led to an accusation that he had spread a call from an official in a previous government, led by Imran Khan, for members of the armed forces to mutiny. Sharif and the official denied inciting mutiny.
Khan said Sharif had been murdered for his journalistic work. He and his successor as prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had called for a judicial investigation into the murder. However, the government had failed to act on the demands. Khan said that the government’s inaction had led to a culture of impunity, where journalists were routinely targeted with impunity.
The discrepancies between the autopsy reports in Kenya and Pakistan raise questions about what really happened to Sharif. According to the Pakistani report, Sharif sustained 12 injuries, while the Kenyan report only mentions two gunshot wounds. It’s unclear how these two reports could differ so vastly. Did Sharif sustain more injuries in Pakistan than were originally reported? Or are the Kenyan authorities withholding information?
The fact-finding team report said doctors believed the injuries may have been the result of torture or a struggle, but it could not be established until verified by the doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination in Kenya. The team had interviewed the relatives of the deceased and they had all said that the family had no history of mental illness.