Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a Paris-based NGO that promotes press freedom, claimed that prominent journalist Arshad Sharif was “obviously targeted” in Kenya and demanded a UN investigation into the vicious killing.
Following the brutal murder of renowned Pakistani TV news anchor Arshad Sharif, who was shot dead in a car near Nairobi, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for a UN investigation and criticised Kenyan police for making conflicting statements and raising concerns about the objectivity of Pakistani investigators. Sharif was killed on July 19, and RSF has called for the waste of two weeks.
According to Sadibou Marong, the director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa bureau, “the information currently emerging from the Kenyan wing of the investigation is contradictory, and any independent attempts to gather information are met with a wall of silence.” “The investigation must be independent and unbiased, and it must not be shrouded in imprecision if Kenyan authorities are to shed light on this crime.”
The reasons behind Arshad Sharif’s death, according to the chief of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, “include why he was in Kenya and, more importantly, why he had to abandon his country.
We are requesting that Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, launch an investigation with an impartial international team to shed as much light as possible on this shocking case because of the potential conflicts of interest on both the Kenyan and Pakistani sides.
The Kenyan police’s up to this point knowledge on the circumstances of the murder has been met with greater scepticism, according to the RSF.
“According to an initial report reviewed by RSF, police opened fire on the car carrying Sharif after mistaking it for a stolen vehicle and after it failed to stop at a checkpoint. However, the car Sharif was travelling in bore no resemblance to the stolen car, making it extremely unlikely that the cops could have made a mistake.
Several Kenyan organisations have issued a combined appeal for “a speedy and comprehensive investigation (…) so that the public learns what really transpired” in reaction to these persistent inconsistencies.
The JIT’s leadership is comprised of personnel from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), both of which are direct extensions of the government, the report continued.
The NGO claimed that, as a result of various cases, including “sedition,” the anchorperson had no choice but to leave his country. However, he had also written a letter to the Supreme Court about the death threats.The RSF demanded that the UN launch an investigation into the senior journalist’s barbaric murder.
