The wife of murdered journalist Arshad Sharif has filed a case against the Kenyan Elite police unit for the killing of her husband in Kenya.
The Kenyan attorney general, the nation’s national police force, and the director of public prosecution have all been named respondents in Javeria Siddique’s petition.
She has pushed for the prosecution and punishment of the officers responsible for the murder of Sharif.
She urged the court to give the Kenyan attorney general (AG) instructions to apologise to Sharif’s family within seven days of the court’s orders, admit the truth, take ownership of her actions, and issue a formal written apology.
Sharif’s widow, while confirming the filing of the case, said: “I have got a case registered in Nairobi for seeking justice in murder case of my husband. We got the case registered against general service unit of Kenya because they committed crime publicly and then admitted it was matter of mistaken identity. But to me it was targeted murder. But Kenyan government never apologised. They never contacted us.”
The registration of the case follows reports that the five Kenyan police officers who were involved in the killing quietly went back to work without facing any consequences.
The five police officers involved in the brutal killing of the journalist at a roadblock in a remote area of East Africa are still receiving full police benefits nine months later, and the Kenyan authorities’ attempts to cover up their actions have only served to further their own interests.
According to a reliable security source, two of the five officers involved in the fatal shootout have been promoted to senior ranks and are now back at work.
Despite promising to provide an update on Sharif’s murder within weeks, Kenya’s Independent Policing and Oversight Authority (IPOA), the body tasked with investigating police officers’ conduct, has not made its findings public in over nine months.
Sharif arrived in Nairobi on August 20 and died on October 23 last year in a shootout in which his driver Khurram Ahmad miraculously survived.
The 49-year-old fled Pakistan in August to avoid arrest after being charged with several crimes, including sedition, in connection with an interview with Shahbaz Gill, a former Imran Khan aide.
After arriving in Nairobi, Sharif stayed at the Riverside penthouse of businessman Waqar Ahmad, who is also Khurram’s brother and was driving him when he was killed.
The journalist was being driven from Waqar’s Ammodump Kwenia training camp to Nairobi County, where he was staying.