Oyeyeah

 

Who Killed Arshad Sharif?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

The Qatar Airways plane carrying ace Pakistani journalist, Arshad Sharif’s coffin to Islamabad landed at the airport way past mid-night on Tuesday. However, the late hours didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of thousands of his fans to eagerly await the arrival of their slain hero’s body.

Arshad Sharif—a celebrated investigative tele-journalist famous for his “Power Play” program on Pakistan’s popular ARY Television—was killed thousands of miles away from Pakistan, in Kenya. The alibi from the Kenyan police for Arshad’s murder was ‘mistaken identity.’ It said he was killed by the Kenyan police because of mistaken identity. The car he was travelling in, outside the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, was mistaken as the one which had been car-jacked with a child inside it.

The Kenyan police version of Arshad Sharif’s brutal murder was too simplistic to stand scrutiny from its own independent journalists. If the trigger-happy Kenyan police sharp shooters suspected Arshad’s car to be the one with an abducted child on board, why should it have fired on it from all four sides—right, left, front and rear.

All tell-tale signs of the heinous tragedy perpetrated on Arshad speak of a minutely-planned and well-calibrated, cold-blooded murder. Gruesome pictures of a blood-soaked Arshad Sharif’s posted on Pakistan’s vibrant social media suggest that at least 11 bullets entered the body; the gaping, blood-splattered wound on the left side of Arshad’s head could only have been inflicted from close range.

Kenya’s police is notoriously infamous for its extra-judicial activism. Figures from Kenyan news media speak of police sources confirming that in the first eight months of the current year, there were at least 160 ‘suspects’ of crimes shot, in cold blood, by police vigilantes. Some Western countries have provided the Kenyan police with state-of-the art equipment to hunt ‘terrorists.’

Arshad Sharif couldn’t be a ‘terrorist ‘target for the trigger-happy Kenyan police. But he was a target of interest to those in Pakistan who were responsible, in the first place, for hounding him out of his beloved country.

Pakistan, in the months since Imran Khan (IK) was toppled from power, has been run like a typical fascist state. Besides hounding IK and his close associates—and meting out obscene punishment to them, bordering on persecution—those in the news media suspected of being close to IK and PTI have been on the hit list of the mafia ruling the roost.

Arshad Sharif was an outspoken critic of the PDM thrust on the people of Pakistan. He was also known to have a soft corner for IK. He was shadowed. In a matter of weeks since the PDM came to power, he was named in 16 different FIRs lodged against him. The contents of these FIRs were risible, branding Arshad as a ‘terrorist’, a ‘blackmailer,’ an anti-Pakistan agent of foreign powers, et al. The bottom line in all these absurd accusations against a fiercely independent and outspoken journalist was that the state apparatus couldn’t stomach unalloyed truth that Arshad Sharif dished out in his television programs.

With his investigative instincts of a competent media professional, Arshad had bared chests full of dirty dealings, thefts and open-and-shut cases of money-laundering. Obviously, his reports were becoming too pin-pointed and bothersome.

With push coming to shove and threats to his life growing menacingly untenable by the day, Arshad was forced to flee Pakistan. But his tormentors weren’t happy that Dubai had become a refuge for him. So, the UAE authorities were leaned on to deport him.

The social media in Pakistan has come up with evidence that a supine Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, as Foreign Minister, wrote a letter to UAE government asking that Arshad be banished from their jurisdiction. Bilawal, of course, denies it. However, official sources attest to such a letter addressed to them.

Arshad moved to London from Dubai, and from there winged his way to Nairobi Kenya. But even from his exile, he continued to post ‘inconvenient’ V-logs to unearth the shenanigans and dirty practices of the culprits and their shady mentors. He was said to be in the process of putting finishing touches on a documentary—with the help of media friends in the West—on the criminal activities under the title, “Behind Closed Doors.”

The last V-log of Arshad was related to the Tosha Khana scandal, which has been used by Pakistan’s palpably partisan Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Raja Sikander Sultan, to disqualify Imran Khan from his Mianwali parliamentary seat that IK resigned from in April. Arshad, in his V-log, asked a recipient to come up clean on expensive gifts collected in the past six years.

The question is, who was, or were, so desperate to turn the screws on Arshad wherever he happened to be? He was, obviously, making them squeamish and very uncomfortable, on the lam. The culprits were feeling hot under their collars because of the heat generated by Arshad’s V-log barrage. They had to silence him.

The next question, related to the first, is what took Arshad Sharif to Kenya?

It’s too early for the jury to come up with its verdict as to what, or who, lured Arshad to Nairobi. But it isn’t too far-fetched to surmise that the investigative journalist, in him, was lured there with the temptation of a journalistic scoop.

The Sicilian mafia is believed to have extensive land holdings, properties and sugar mills in Kenya and, whenever in power, posted a crony and a person of confidence as High Commissioner to Kenya to watch over family interests in that country.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called for an enquiry of the gruesome tragedy. However, his Interior Minister thinks he can still hoodwink the people of Pakistan with a wishy-washy ‘investigation’ of the dastardly crime perpetrated on Arshad Sharif. He has constituted a three-man committee for this purpose. However, the three agencies tasked with his flimsy enquiry are those that hounded Arshad from Pakistan.

But the martyred Arshad Sharif may still have the last laugh against those who plotted his murder. His funeral in Islamabad on Thursday, October 27, may serve as an ideal trigger to launch IK’s Long March, the next day, October 28. Tens of thousands—may be hundreds of thousands—mourners attended the funeral. They may become the front runners to herald ‘Kaptan’s long-promised long march. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)