The Government of Pakistan said Wednesday that it has excluded the representative of Pakistan’s Intelligence Services (ISI) from the team investigating the death of influential journalist Arshad Sharif at the hands of Kenyan security forces that will travel to the African country.
The authorities have thus stressed that the team will consist of two people representing the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), although initially the group was to consist of three people.
The Minister of the Interior confirmed that it will be the director of the FIA, Athar Wahid, and the deputy director of the IB, Omar Shahid Hamid, who will travel to Kenyan territory, where the journalist was shot dead while traveling in a vehicle after allegedly jumping a police checkpoint.
«The team will travel to Kenya immediately,» said the government, which has indicated that the Foreign Ministry and the Pakistan High Commission in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, «will facilitate» the visit to the members of the committee, according to information from the newspaper ‘Dawn’.
The Kenyan Police reported on Monday that Sharif had been shot in the head by an officer after the driver of the vehicle in which he was traveling jumped a police checkpoint set up to stop a similar car.
Sources close to the matter said that the vehicle was stopped to facilitate the identification of the passengers, but the driver continued on without stopping, which led to a brief chase and a shootout.