Photo courtesy PID
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Friday reiterated allegations that the men who had hosted journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya—Khurram and Waqar Ahmad—were complicit in his killing with Kenyan police.
In an interview with private broadcaster Geo News, he repeated an allegation he had earlier voiced during a press conference, describing Sharif’s shooting as a “target killing.” He also stressed that the postmortem report and initial investigations suggested Kenyan police’s claims of Sharif being shot as a result of “mistaken identity” was false.
According to Sanaullah, the role of the Ahmad siblings is made even more suspicious because they are refusing to provide authorities with access to their mobile phone data.
Noting that Sharif had traveled to Kenya from Dubai on Waqar’s sponsorship—and had been staying at an apartment owned by him—he alleged that the killing was the result of a “joint conspiracy” between the Ahmad brothers and five Kenyan police officers.
“We have evidence against those who forced Sharif to leave the country,” he claimed. “Some people called him and told him to leave while some say that Sharif left due to the situation in the country. However, Arshad Sharif did not want to leave the country,” he added.
Alleging that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa had issued a threat alert to scare the slain journalist, he claimed there was evidence of how Sharif was forced to sit in the plane from Peshawar to Dubai. “We have a record of everything, including why Sharif went to Waqar’s house and stayed as a guest,” he said, adding that the only reason Waqar was not being named in the case was because the probe was ongoing.
To a question, the interior minister said he would request Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to once again talk to the Kenyan president to demand cooperation from Kenyan police.
Also on Friday, Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority issued a statement maintaining that Sharif’s murder by Kenyan police was being investigated to establish the facts surrounding the shooting. Chairperson Anne Makori said the independent body has started a “full and thorough investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the shooting.”