Africa-Press – Kenya. A team of security officials from Pakistan visited a shooting range where slain journalist Arshad Sharif had been hours before he met his death. The Pakistani government sent a team of top security officials to ascertain the circumstances under which the journalist was killed.
The team, led by Arthar Waheed (Director of the Federal Investigation Agency) and Omar Shahid Hamid (the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau), is expected to submit a report on its findings to Pakistan Interior Ministry.
Witnesses said the team, which was in the company of Kenyan detectives on Sunday, October 30, visited Ammodump Kwenia Shooting Range in Magadi where Sharif had been on October 23 when he was shot and killed at about 10 pm.
They talked to witnesses and workers and later visited the scene of the shooting. Witnesses said the officials were shown how the shooting happened. The team led by Pakistan High Commissioner to Kenya Saqlain Syedah on Monday met acting Inspector General of police Noor Gabow in his office.
They were expected to meet more government officials before leaving Kenya. This came as officials said the Pakistan team handling the probe discovered a metallic object in Sharif’s chest after an autopsy was conducted on his body.
The postmortem was conducted by eight members of the medical board at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) after his body was repatriated. It will now help conduct further probe into what weapons were used in the shooting.
The General Service Unit (GSU) officials involved in the shooting said they fired at the four-wheel drive car carrying Sharif after one of its occupants shot one of the officers. The officer was shot in the left hand by a 9mm bullet. All officers at the scene were armed with rifles.
It is not clear who shot at the officers at the roadblock, which was erected following reports of a carjacking incident which turned out to be a disagreement between a son and father.
Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence is questioning who facilitated Sharif’s move to Kenya in August this year after his Dubai visa expired, and is demanding international experts participate in the probe.
Sharif had been in Kenya for more than two months and was being hosted by a Pakistani family in Riverside Drive, Nairobi. The award-winning journalist was reportedly vocally opposed to the ongoing political developments in Pakistan.
He is said to have been on the run from Pakistan following an ongoing crackdown. Some residents of two villages in Magadi near where the shooting of Sharif happened have explained their role in the incident.
Police visited Esonorua and Tinga villages in Kajiado North where the four-wheel drive car carrying Sharif and his driver passed moments after they were shot at by police who had mounted a roadblock 26 kilometres away. According to the villagers, the Toyota Landcruiser car was racing from Ammodump Kwenia Shooting Range.
The residents told a team investigating the incident they received a report from their area Assistant Chief that a Mercedes Benz Sprinter registration number plate KDJ 700F allegedly stolen from Pangani area had been seen in the area.
The administrator asked them to be on alert in the spirit of community policing and erect roadblocks to stop the “thieves”. Police have since established the villagers erected two roadblocks in Esonorua and Tinga before residents received reports that the vehicle had passed another roadblock erected by General Service Unit a few kilometres away.
The GSU personnel said they were called by the villagers and informed the car was headed towards their direction. It was then that the shooting happened at Kamkuru/Magadi junction.
The other villagers who were waiting at Esonorua said they saw the car race past them with a flat tyre. This was after it had been shot at by police at their roadblock near their Magadi Training Camp.
The car was driven up to Tinga where the owner of Kwenia Camp and the shooting range has a second home and stopped at the gate. The residents said they camped outside the car and established the passenger who was Sharif was dead with a gunshot wound in the head while his driver was unhurt.
They called the police and informed them of the same. Police officers from Kiserian Police Station arrived 30 minutes later and collected the body. By then, one of the GSU officers manning the roadblock at Kamukuru where the shooting happened had reported he was shot at from the car and injured in the left palm.
The officers claimed they opened fire after one of the GSU officers was injured when the occupants of the car shot at them. It is during the shoot-out that the police claim Sharif was killed and one of the vehicle’s tyres was shot in a bid to stop them.
The driver drove for 20 kilometres before stopping. The team that visited the scene where the car was, searched it but did not recover any weapon. It has also emerged the driver at the time of the incident Khurram Ahmed is a brother to the owner of the shooting range Waqar Ahmed.
Khurram called his brother after the shooting and informed him of the incident before he instructed him to drive with him to Tinga shopping centre for attention.
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