Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said Tuesday that the attack on Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, who died after being shot by Kenyan security forces, was a «targeted killing».
«The death of Arshad Sharif is not a case of mistaken identity,» he told a press conference, adding that although they still need more evidence, the evidence points to this possibility, as reported by the ARY News channel.
The NGO Reporters Without Borders called on Tuesday for a UN investigation into the death of the journalist while he was traveling from the town of Magadi to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
«The information currently coming out of the Kenyan wing of the investigation is contradictory, and all independent attempts to obtain information come up against a wall of silence,» said Sadibou Marong, director of the sub-Saharan Africa office.
Reporters Without Borders made it clear that «if the Kenyan authorities want to shed light on this murder, they must ensure that the investigation is not shrouded in inaccuracies and that it is independent and impartial».
Preliminary information suggested that he had died as a result of an accident, although the police later indicated that Sharif was shot in the head by an officer after he and the driver of the vehicle in which they were traveling jumped a police checkpoint.
The checkpoint had been set up precisely to stop a car similar to the one used by the journalist and his companion after the alleged kidnapping of a child in Nairobi, so the authorities claimed that it was a confusion with the identity of the journalist.
