A court in Kenya decided today that the government should pay Ksh10 million to the family of slain Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, who was killed by police while in the country in 2022.
The verdict by Lady Justice Stella Ngali Mutuku of the High Court in Kajiado came on a lawsuit that Mr Sharif’s widow, Javeria Sidique, filed against Attorney General Justin Muturi, Inspector General of Police Japhet Koome and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Renson Ingonga, seeking answers in the cold-blooded daylight murder of her husband.
Her husband, the late Mr Sharif, was a 49-year-old journalist from Pakistan who had come to Kenya to seek asylum when he was shot dead two years ago in the Tinga area of Kajiado County in what the police later described as a case of mistaken identity.
“In the shooting of the deceased in the circumstances disclosed in the petition, and which shooting has been admitted, save for the allegations that it was a mistaken identity, the respondents (AG, Koome and the National Police Service and National Police Service Commission) violated the rights of the deceased under Articles 26, 27 and 29 of the constitution,” Lady Justice Mutuku said in the ruling, ordering the government to pay the ten million Kenyan shillings in compensatory damages to the victim’s family.
“The (AG), in my view, cannot escape responsibility by claiming that the functions of that office exempt the office from any responsibility in this matter,” the high court judge added while giving a directive to the policing authority IPOA and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP) that they should complete the investigations and charge the police who were involved in the killing.
Meanwhile, the collection of the damages remains uncertain because the high court gave the government 30 days to appeal against the decision.
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