NAIROBI (Reuters) – The Kenyan government must pay 10 million shillings ($78,300) to the family of a prominent Pakistani journalist who was shot dead by police in the capital Nairobi in 2022, a Kenyan court ruled on Monday.
TV journalist Arshad Sharif, who had fled Pakistan citing threats to his life, was shot dead in Nairobi in October that year.
Kenyan officials said it was a case of mistaken identity and that police hunting car thieves opened fire on his vehicle as it drove through a roadblock without stopping.
A two-member fact-finding team from Pakistan, who reconstructed the crime scene and examined the deceased’s phones and computers, said in a 600-page report that Sharif’s killing was a pre-planned murder.
Last October his widow, Javeria Siddique, sued Kenya police’s paramilitary General Service Unit for her husband’s wrongful death.
Sharif fled Pakistan after the government registered several treason cases against him.
One of the treason cases stemmed from an accusation that Sharif’s reporting had disseminated a call from an official in a previous government, led by former cricket star Imran Khan, for members of the armed forces to mutiny.
Both Sharif and the official in the previous government denied inciting a mutiny.
($1 = 127.7500 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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