A Kenyan medical expert has refuted claims that Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was tortured for three hours before being shot to death in Kenya nearly a month ago.
A Kenyan media outlet on Friday claimed that a medical expert who had analysed the post-mortem report findings of Arshad Sharif had discredited the notion that Sharif was tortured before his death.
Pakistani journalist Kamran Shahid had claimed on November 9 that Arshad Sharif was killed in a premeditated targeted attack and not a case of mistaken identity as being claimed by Kenyan media. On a segment of his TV show, he had shown pictures supposedly of Arshad Sharif’s dead body, and claimed that the post-mortem reports depicted that Sharif was tortured for nearly three hours before his death.
Following these reports, the Kenyan news outlet reached out to Dr Ahmed Kalebi, a Nairobi-based independent consultant pathologist who had analysed the two post-mortem examination reports of Arshad Sharif.
According to Kalebi, the time between injury and death was anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. “Whereas the report doesn’t elaborate on the reasoning behind the time interval from injury to death, it appears that this estimation was made on the basis of the injuries seen in the brain and the right lung rather than any particular histopathological examination or further scientific examination analysis,” he said.
He also claimed that the reports from autopsies done in both Kenya and Pakistan do not depict any evidence of torture. “The report has not documented any evidence of other injuries that would be consistent with torture, nor does it indicate that the deceased was tortured before death,” he was quoted as saying.
The sensational reporting by a section of Pakistani media that the body of #ArshadSharif had torture injuries and that he was shot at close range are actually FALSE assertions & misinterpretation of facts – not backed by the postmortem reports from Kenya & Pakistan
Thread 1/n https://t.co/QsYirCT8sR pic.twitter.com/Oqj7vwJF9K
— , (@DrAhmedKalebi) November 11, 2022
