On the night of October 23, 2022, Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was shot dead in a remote area outside the Kenyan capital Nairobi, according to a statement by the Kenyan police and a post by his wife, Javeria Siddique, on Twitter.
A police officer fatally shot Sharif, 49, who previously worked as an anchor with Pakistan’s ARY News, at a roadblock while they were looking for a stolen motor vehicle, according to the police statement and news reports.
Sharif left Pakistan in August 2022 while facing a series of police cases against him, and an arrest warrant was issued following his interview on ARY News with Shahbaz Gill, a close aide to former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who made comments considered offensive by the military, according to news reports and Siddique, who spoke with CPJ ahead of the six-month anniversary of Sharif’s death. Sharif was facing 16 police cases against him across Pakistan, including complaints of high treason, according to Siddique.
ARY News was briefly taken off the air in Pakistan in August 2022, and on August 31, the channel said it was parting ways with Sharif, citing a breach of conduct on social media.
Sharif first fled to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, but left for Kenya later in August 2022, following pressure from the Pakistan embassy and the Dubai police, who said he would be deported back to Pakistan if he did not exit the country, Siddique said.
In Kenya, Sharif continued reporting on alleged corruption among Pakistan’s ruling elites on his YouTube channel, which had 445,000 followers at the time of his death, according to Siddique, who is seeking an independent United Nations-led probe into what she called a “targeted killing.”
The unclear circumstances under which Sharif died prompted questions in Pakistani, Kenyan, and international media, including why the vehicle was targeted as the registration plate of the car he was in did not match the plate number of the stolen vehicle, and why the police had targeted Sharif, a passenger, rather than the driver.
In December 2022, Pakistan’s Supreme Court took notice of the case and ordered a government investigation into Sharif’s death. In a December 2022 report, a Pakistan government fact-finding team found that the Kenyan police portrayal of the killing as a case of mistaken identity was “full of contradictions” and that the involvement of “characters in Kenya, Dubai, and Pakistan in this assassination cannot be ruled out.”
The team also noted that a Pakistan post-mortem report had documented numerous injuries on Sharif’s body, including four missing fingernails, hand wounds, and a broken rib, but that the investigation had found “no concrete evidence” to establish that Sharif was tortured before his death.
In December 2022, the Pakistan government formed a new joint investigation team to probe the killing following an order by the country’s Supreme Court. In February 2023, Pakistan state officials told the court that Kenyan authorities had denied the team access to evidence and the crime scene.
A year after the killing, Siddique and two press rights groups — the Kenya Correspondents Association and the Kenya Union of Journalists — sued Kenya’s police, the attorney general, public prosecutors and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), a civilian police watchdog. In July 2024, the High Court at Kajiado County found in favor of the petitioners, ruling that Sharif’s killing had breached his constitutional right to life, that he was subjected to torture, and that failure to promptly and effectively investigate his killing further contravened authorities’ constitutional and international human rights law obligations.
The court ordered authorities to conclude the investigations and to take appropriate action against any police officers determined to be guilty. The court further directed that authorities provide Siddique and the two press rights groups a report on the status of the investigation and awarded damages of 10 million Kenya shillings (US$78,000).
Following a challenge by IPOA and a cross-appeal by Siddique and the two press rights groups, in July 2025 the Court of Appeal in Nairobi issued a judgment upholding the ruling that Sharif’s constitutional right to life was breached, but found that there had been no evidence that the journalist was tortured before death. The court absolved IPOA of liability, saying that the authority had carried out its statutory mandate to investigate the case, but ordered the body to provide Sharif’s family with an update on the investigationwithin 30 days. The court further declined to order the police to apologize for the killing, saying it could not do so absent a decision on whether to prosecute the case, or to enhance the approved damages.
Siddique and the two press rights groups appealed to the Supreme Court in September 2025, seeking a finding that Sharif had been tortured, that police be compelled to apologize, and that public prosecutors be directed to initiate investigations, as well as to enhance the damage. In a July 2026 judgment, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, largely upholding the Court of Appeal’s 2025 judgment. The Supreme Court said that the appellants had failed to provide evidence that Sharif was tortured before death, and that it could not compel the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) to charge the culpable officers in court, since that would amount to an interference to the public prosecutors’ constitutionally mandated independence.
In February 2026, Pakistan’s Federal Constitutional Court disposed of a case looking into Sharif’s killing, arguing that the two countries involved were already investigating and there “is no need for any judicial interference,” according to media reports.
In April 2023, CPJ called and messaged Marriyum Aurangzeb, Pakistan’s information minister; Malik Ahmad Khan, spokesperson for Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif; and Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of the Pakistan military media wing, ,but did not receive any replies. The press wing of Pakistan President Arif Alvi’s office and the Pakistan embassy in the United Arab Emirates did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment .
In April 2023, CPJ also called and messaged Japheth Koome, inspector general of the Kenyan police at the time, and Resila Onyango, the national police spokesperson at the time, but did not receive any replies. CPJ’s calls to Noordin Haji, director of public prosecutions at the time, did not connect and messages did not receive a response.
A representative who answered CPJ’s call to Anne Makori, chairperson of Kenya’s IPOA at the time, said Makori would review CPJ’s written questions; however, CPJ did not receive a response. IPOA spokesperson Dennis Oketch also requested CPJ email questions but did not respond.
The Dubai police did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment sent in April 2023.
In July 2024, CPJ’s requests for comment, sent via messaging app to Kenya’s Attorney General Justin Muturi, the ODPP, the Kenyan police, and the IPOA, did not receive a response.