NAIROBI: A Kenyan court on Monday found police acted unlawfully over the killing of a Pakistani journalist in 2022 following a complaint by his widow, her lawyer and local media said.
Arshad Sharif, a strident critic of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment and supporter of former premier Imran Khan, was shot in the head when Kenyan police opened fire on his car in October 2022.
His widow Javeria Siddique and two journalist groups in Kenya filed a complaint last year against top police and legal officials over the “arbitrary and unlawful killing” of Sharif and the respondents’ “consequent failure to investigate.”
On Monday, the High Court in Kajiado, a town south of Nairobi, rejected a police claim that the killing was a case of mistaken identity, and that officers’ believed they were firing on a stolen vehicle involved in an abduction.
Judge Stella Mutuku ruled that Sharif’s murder was unconstitutional and that his rights to life and protection were violated, Kenyan media said.
“I find that the respondents, jointly and severally through their actions violated the rights of the petitioners,” Mutuku said, according to The Nation.
Siddique’s lawyer Ochiel Dudley confirmed the court ruling, describing it as a “great precedent for police accountability.”
He said the ruling found “Kenya violated Arshad Sharif’s right to life, dignity, and freedom from torture, cruel, and degrading treatment.”
He said the court ordered the government to pay 10 million Kenyan shillings ($78,000) in compensation.
The Kenyan court said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and Independent Policing Oversight Authority had violated Sharif’s rights by not prosecuting the two officers involved, Dudley added.
It ordered the two institutions to conclude their investigations and charge the two police officers, he said.
Sharif fled Pakistan in August 2022, days after interviewing a senior opposition politician who said junior officers in Pakistan’s military should disobey orders that went against “the will of the majority.”
The country has been ruled by the military for several decades of its 75-year history and criticism of the security establishment has long been seen as a red line.
Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful
https://arab.news/wckwu
Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful
- Arshad Sharif was shot in the head when Kenyan police opened fire on his car in October 2022
- High Court in Kajiado, a town south of Nairobi, rejected a police claim that the killing was a case of mistaken identity
China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summons international media representatives
HONG KONG: China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summoned international media representatives for a “regulatory talk” on Saturday, saying some had spread false information and smeared the government in recent reports on a deadly fire and upcoming legislative elections.
Senior journalists from several major outlets operating in the city, including AFP, were summoned to the meeting by the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), which was opened in 2020 following Beijing’s imposition of a wide-ranging national security law on the city.
Through the OSNS, Beijing’s security agents operate openly in Hong Kong, with powers to investigate and prosecute national security crimes.
“Recently, some foreign media reports on Hong Kong have disregarded facts, spread false information, distorted and smeared the government’s disaster relief and aftermath work, attacked and interfered with the Legislative Council election, (and) provoked social division and confrontation,” an OSNS statement posted online shortly after the meeting said.
At the meeting, an official who did not give his name read out a similar statement to media representatives.
He did not give specific examples of coverage that the OSNS had taken issue with, and did not take questions.
The online OSNS statement urged journalists to “not cross the legal red line.”
“The Office will not tolerate the actions of all anti-China and trouble-making elements in Hong Kong, and ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you’,” it read.
For the past week and a half, news coverage in Hong Kong has been dominated by a deadly blaze on a residential estate which killed at least 159 people.
Authorities have warned against crimes that “exploit the tragedy” and have reportedly arrested at least three people for sedition in the fire’s aftermath.
Dissent in Hong Kong has been all but quashed since Beijing brought in the national security law, after huge and sometimes violent protests in 2019.
Hong Kong’s electoral system was revamped in 2021 to ensure that only “patriots” could hold office, and the upcoming poll on Sunday will select a second batch of lawmakers under those rules.
