• RSF urged UN probe into Arshad Sharif’s murder
• It expressed doubts over inconsistencies in statements of Kenyan police
• It said Arshad Sharif was clearly targeted

PARIS: Global press freedom advocate, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), called for a United Nations investigation into the brutal murder of well-known Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif.

“The information currently emerging from the Kenyan wing of the investigation is contradictory, and all independent attempts to get information are met with a wall of silence,” said Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa bureau, according to a press release distributed worldwide.

“If the Kenyan authorities want to shed light on this murder, they must ensure that the investigation is not cloaked in imprecision and that it is independent and impartial.”

Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk said, “Why was Arshad Sharif in Kenya and, above all, why did he have to flee his country – these are the questions behind his murder.”

“The potential conflicts of interest are such on both the Kenyan and Pakistani sides that we are calling on the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, to launch an investigation with an independent international team to shed all possible light on this shocking case.”

A journalist at the regular United Nations briefing in New York asked for reaction to RSF’s call, but UN Associate Stephanie Tremblay offered no comments, saying a statement was made on Oct 25, the day Arshad Sharif was shot and killed outside Nairobi.

The UN had urged Kenya to conduct a thorough investigation into his death, and share the findings with the public.

The RSF also raised doubts over the inconsistencies in the statements of the Kenyan police and authorities regarding the murder, and said Arshad Sharif was ‘clearly targeted’.

It said Sharif was killed by two shots fired at close range. This is one of the few hard facts to have emerged in the two weeks since his murder in a Nairobi suburb on 23 October.

The information comes from a Kenyan autopsy report published on 4 November. It says that one of the bullets entered his back and exited via his chest and that the other bullet lodged in his head.

“These details have increased the scepticism about the information so far provided by the Kenyan police about the circumstances of the murder,” the statement said.

An initial report seen by RSF said police fired on the car in which Sharif was travelling because they mistook it for a stolen car and because it did not stop at a checkpoint.

But the car in which Sharif was travelling bore no similarity to the stolen car, so it is highly unlikely that the police could have confused them.

A subsequent account provided by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) claimed that police officers returned fire in response to shots fired by a person inside the car, and that the shots fired by the police hit Sharif by mistake.

“But this version is belied by the autopsy report, which shows that Sharif was clearly targeted,” it added.

Several Kenyan organisations have issued a joint call for “a rapid and comprehensive investigation (…) so that the public knows what really happened.”

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