Govt not pressing Kenyan authorities, SC told

ISLAMABAD: The wife of slain journalist Arshad Sharif told the Supreme Court on Saturday that the federal government had allegedly not been exerting pressure on Kenyan officials and was extremely slow and ineffective in coordination to ensure a transparent investigation into the last year’s killing of Mr Sharif.

In her application, Javeria Siddique argued that the investigative report issued by the Kenyan authorities was found to be inconsistent and contradictory, with outside sources offering different accounts as to the circumstances and human rights violations surrounding Mr Sharif’s death.

A five-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, is set to resume on June 13 (Tuesday) a suo motu hearing on Mr Sharif’s death in Kenya.

Court will resume hearing Arshad Sharif case on Tuesday

Earlier this week, Mr Sharif’s mother, through her counsel Advocate Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, requested the Supreme Court to direct a special joint investigation team working on the case to include PTI Chairman Imran Khan and four other people in the investigation to collect evidence against the real perpetrators.

These five people — also including Faisal Vawda, Murad Saeed, ARY Chief Executive Officer Salman Iqbal and vlogger Imran Riaz — should be consulted because they had made claims with all certainty about Mr Sharif’s assassination, she said in an application.

The fresh application by Mr Siddique was in fact an attempt to provide all available mechanisms concerning international covenants and resolutions to conduct an independent and transparent investigation of the journalist’s death.

She said that in light of the numerous human rights violations that occurred in the case of Arshad Sharif and the attention garnered in international human rights organisations and the international media, she deemed it imperative to lay before the apex court the viable mechanism that would allow independent international operations to conduct a free, fair and transparent investigation into her husband’s death.

The application furnished several resolutions of the UNSC and intern­ational conventions enac­ted to reinforce the UN and its member states’ efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms. The provisions stress upon condemnation and criminalisation of terrorism in any form and the implementation of measures to prosecute those responsible as per the applicable law.

She said the unknown circumstances under which Mr Sharif was killed left no doubt it was an act of terrorism and therefore attracted these provisions and prompted the need of the federal government to gauge its avenues under different resolutions.