THE widow of a prominent Pakistani journalist who was killed a year ago in Kenya filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Kenyan police for the wrongful killing of her husband.

Javeria Siddique said that she filed the lawsuit in Nairobi to get justice for her husband Arshad Sharif, a well-known journalist in his home country Pakistan. 

Mr Sharif was shot dead on October 23 2022 by officers from Kenya’s General Service Unit (GSU), according to Pakistani authorities. 

The officers involved in the incident later claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.

Ms Siddique wants Kenya’s attorney general, the National Police Service and the director of public prosecutions “to punish and prosecute the police officers who killed Arshad Sharif.”

The lawsuit also wants the court to direct the attorney general “to issue a public apology, including an acknowledgement of the facts, and acceptance of responsibility to the family of Mr Sharif within seven days of this court’s order.”

Ms Siddique said: “I am suing the GSU because it committed the crime openly, then admitted that it was a case of mistaken identity. 

“But for me it was a targeted assassination because he was living in hiding in Kenya after receiving threats in Pakistan.”

She said: “The Kenyan government never issued any apology. It never contacted us, never showed any kind of kindness towards us. It is really cruel for a government to be so insensitive.” 

Mr Sharif fled Pakistan last July to avoid arrest for criticising the country’s powerful military and later arrived in Kenya.

Police in Nairobi said the journalist had been shot and killed when he did not stop driving at a roadblock on the outskirts of the capital. 

Kenya’s National Police Service and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, a body responsible for holding the police to account, did not respond to requests to comment on the lawsuit.