Govt recreates JIT to probe Arshad Sharif murder, SC told – Pakistan

On the directions of the Supreme Court, the federal government on Thursday re-created a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate the murder of journalist Arshad Sharif.

The new JIT will be supervised by Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Police Headquarters DIG Muhammad Owais, while other members include officials from the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence (MI) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The government has also issued the notification in this regard.

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial, while heading the five-member bench that is hearing the suo motu case into the gruesome murder of journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya on October 23, had directed the government to create a JIT which is not under dispute from anyone.

Earlier the fact-finding committee formed by the federal government said that Arshad Sharif was deliberately killed and his attackers knew full well who he was before pulling the trigger.

The fact-finding committee, which comprised investigators from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) , had traveled to Kenya and Dubai in search of answers relating to Arshad Sharif’s movements, the people he interacted and why did he take the decisions he took.

Towards the end of their mission, they prepared a report which was then submitted to the Federal Interior Ministry for onward processing.

In their report, the investigators dismissed the view that Arshad Sharif was killed due to mistaken identity as a kidnapper who was fleeing from a police picket near rural Nairobi in Kenya.

Instead, they said that his murder had been ‘planned’.
The committee further said that they could not find any evidence to establish the theory that he had been killed as a result of ‘mistaken identity’.

The report stated that Arshad Sharif in the weeks prior to his murder and after leaving Pakistan, he had been in contact with more than a dozen people spread across Pakistan, Dubai and Kenya.