Arshad Sharif 'not tortured' before death, says Kenyan expert.

REFUTING news reports carried by the sections of Pakistani media in recent days claiming that journalist Arshad Sharif was tortured for two to three hours and then killed, a Kenyan newspaper cited an expert who analysed post-mortem examination findings and discredited this account of Mr Sharif's death.

'The reporting by sections of Pakistan media sought to cast doubt on the official account by Kenyan authorities that the prominent journalist was shot dead [last month in Kenya] by police at a roadblock in a case of mistaken identity,' Kenya's Nation newspaper said in a report published on Friday.

The 'torture before death' account first came to the fore when a Pakistani journalist gave what he described as 'shocking details of the cold-blooded' killing of Arshad Sharif. That journalist claimed that Mr Sharif was 'brutally tortured for over three hours and his nails were pulled from fingers before being martyred, while his fingers and ribs were also broken due to severe torture'.

Describing the death as a premeditated assassination, he said that 'the shots were fired from a close range on the back of [Mr Sharif's] head'.

When the Nation reached out to Dr Ahmed Kalebi, an independent consultant pathologist based in Nairobi who analysed the two post-mortem examination reports to explain the cause of death, he pointed out that the probable time that lapsed between injury and death 'was between 10 and 30 minutes', the Kenyan newspaper reported.

'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,' Dr Kalebi explained.

The pathologist explained from the reports of autopsies done in Kenya and Pakistan, there is no evidence of...