Uncover - S17: "The Kill List" E2: A Death in Sweden

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Months before Karima’s death, another prominent Baloch dissident is found drowned in a river in Sweden. Sajid Hussain had also fled Pakistan to start a new life in safety. His death bears a striking resemblance to Karima’s. Could the two be connected? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/the-kill-list-transcripts-listen-1.6514561

Hi, everybody. I'm Jamie Poisson, and I host FrontBurner. How many podcasts have you heard where people are searching out facts on the fly? Or where they just talk in circles, and two hours later, you're not really sure what you just learned? Well, FrontBurner is not that. Five days a week, you get one story a day. It's deeply researched, about 20 minutes long, and hopefully we answer all the questions that you want asked. We do lots of Canadian news, but a wide range of topics too. Find and follow FrontBurner wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide. Please take care. In late April of 2020, just outside of Uppsala, a city in Sweden, a young man cycles down a gravel path leading to the Fierce River. It's a path he takes often. As he looks down along the riverbank, he notices something half in, half out of the water. First he thinks it's a rock. When he gets closer, he sees a dark hoodie. And then he realizes it's a body. It was Sajid Hussein, the 39-year-old Pakistani-born journalist, had been missing for nearly two months. At the time when his body was found, what did you think? I was

numb. Wajid Hussein is also a journalist. He lives in Pakistan. But when Sajid went missing, he picked up his phone and started making calls to Sweden, looking for his older brother. I waited and searched for him at least for a month. Then I started making up my mind that I might find him dead one day. I was not sure, but I prepared myself that I might get a news that he's found dead. So I was expecting this. I was ready for it because I knew it was my gut feeling that Sajid is no more.

because I knew it was my gut feeling that Sajid is normal. Sajid had been in exile from Pakistan since 2012, first in Oman, then Uganda, Dubai, and in 2017, Sweden, where he applied for political asylum. Like Karima, he was Baloch, and like Karima, he had fled Pakistan, fearing he would be killed by state authorities. In his case, it was because of his unrelenting reporting on the situation in Balochistan. And like Karima, in 2020, he went missing, and was later found dead in a body of water.

my name is Mary Link and this is The Kill List episode 2 a death in Sweden What was he like? Sajid, he was a great person. A kind person. Approachable, accessible every time. A guy who was full of wisdom because he invested his whole life reading books, pursuing for truth. That's why I think he chose journalism as his profession,

because he was always in search of stories that were controversial at that time, in search of stories that no one talked about. Pakistan is a place where being a journalist, especially in Balochistan, can be deadly. He was brave enough to talk about things which many journalists were afraid of at that time and still. at that time and still. In 2007, after studying economics at Karachi University, Sajid had begun working as a journalist. One of his main investigations,

the Pakistani state's illegal abductions of people in Balochistan. They're known as the disappeared. Tens of thousands have gone missing, according to numbers cited by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Sajid was also reporting on alleged links between the Pakistani military and the notorious drug lords of Balochistan. There are connections between the drug lord and the military, and that was what Sajid tried to prove in his writings.

Taj Baluch was a friend of Sajid's. This was investigated by the Reuters International, and Sajid was a main source of that article as well. He proved that the drug lords are working under the military's control. These drug lords peddle heroin. Much of the world's supply comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan. The common route out for the heroin is over the border to Balochistan. It's a multi-billion dollar business.

And Sajid was investigating Imam Beal, according to the Obama administration, one of the top drug barons in the world. Sajid's journalism was making a lot of people angry. The death threats against him were mounting. In a 2019 report presented to the UN, the Human Rights Council of Balochistan stated, quote,

more than 100 reporters had been killed in Balochistan. People were vanishing from the circles. People were being dumped from the circles. When Wajid said people were being dumped, he's referring to what is known as the Pakistani military kill-and-dump policy, meaning after illegally kidnapping dissidents, the military has a habit of killing and dumping their bodies in places where they can be found later, a common occurrence in Balochistan.

A gruesome warning not to displease the state authorities, And Sajat thought he could be next. And he was getting threats. And there was a point he thought that if you don't leave the country right now, you might get killed. Wajid says in early September 2012, that fear became all too real for his brother when the ISI showed up at the Serena Hotel in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan. ISI is Pakistan's feared intelligence agency.

The agents were looking for the Pakistani journalist who was helping the international news agency Reuters write a story on the disappeared. At the time, they didn't know the journalist was Sajat. A number of agents showed up at the hotel room where the work was being conducted and began knocking on the door to be let in. Looking through the peephole in the door, the Reuters journalist told Sajat, ISI is here. He directed Sajat to a back door in the hotel room. Sajat ran out, and while making his way through the hotel,

he passed other agents who hadn't realized the target had escaped or that the person was Sajet. But soon they did. ISI went to Sajet's home and raided it, says Wajet, seizing documents and his laptop. Sajet wasn't there, but his wife was. ISI gave her a message. Tell your husband to stop reporting, or he will face our wrath.

A week later, Sajid fled Pakistan, leaving behind his family in a country where discussing human rights violations in Balochistan is increasingly not tolerated. Now in Pakistan, something that I've only really seen in the last six years, which really disturbs me, if you talk about what's happening in Balochistan, you are liable to be killed. And we've seen that. Mustafa Qadri is a human rights expert who is head of Amnesty International's team in Pakistan. We've seen that with activists from relatively privileged backgrounds, simply having lectures on the topic, being shot dead, being arrested, being disappeared. It's on a completely

different level. The kinds of practices that you'd expect to see in somewhere like North Korea or China, where people literally just disappear. So effectively, you have a blank check for these authorities to do as they please. And of course, what do we know that when you have a blank check for these authorities to do as they please. And of course, what do we know with that? When you have people that use violence to project their power and they get away with it, what does that tell them? It emboldens them. It tells them that what they're doing is working.

Sajid continued to report on Balochistan, even in exile. In 2015, he co-founded the Balochistan Times, a news website which is still in operation, but now blocked in exile. In 2015, he co-founded the Balochistan Times, a news website which is still in operation, but now blocked in Pakistan. At the time of his death, he was a postgraduate student and part-time instructor at Uppsala University, and he was working on a novel and reading, always reading great works of literature.

We always called him little old man, like he was an old soul, in a young body. Sajid's friend Taj. The last day Taj saw him, Sajid was moving from Stockholm to a new apartment in Uppsala, about an hour and a half away by bus. Tell me about the last time you talked to Sajjad and what he was like. We were together when he left for Uppsala. And one thing common in all of us is the depression and the worryness for each other and for the situation and for our kids, our families, everything.

And for the situation, for our kids, our families, everything. We all are disappointed with ourselves on so many things because we could not do the things we wanted to do. As with many exiles, Sajid felt low at times. When he died, he had been on antidepressants. But he was not as depressed to commit a suicide. And his life was full of projects that were important to him, including expansion plans for the Balochistan Times. Taj is a writer and editor for the website.

He called a Zoom meeting the day before to expand our work. Sajat was also helping to prepare a major report on Balochistan's disappeared to be submitted to the UN in Geneva. And he was finally ending his long daily commutes. And he was happy that he was going to shift to Uppsala where the university is too much close to him. He doesn't need to travel for hours every day by going and coming back. But on the day of his move to Uppsala, Sajjad disappeared. What went through your mind when he was missing, Taj? I thought that because he worked against the drug lords of the region,

he worked against the Islam lords of the region, he works against the Islamists of the region, he wrote against the state's military, he had many enemies. My first thought was someone has done something which we don't know what it is. What are your thoughts now? I don't know. It is the police and the state to find it out. I still don't know what has happened

because we don't know the location of his phone and what was his searches in the phone. He used a bus or he walked somewhere near the river. He fell by any accident in the river or somebody pushed him near the river. He fell by any accident in the river or somebody pushed him in the river. We don't know all these things. It has the police's responsibility to find it out, but we're not having all these details.

Taj says for a long time, he couldn't get the police to investigate the possibility that Sajid had been kidnapped or killed. No, not at all. When I went personally to the police office, I talked to the investigation officers, one of them personally, and I told them that if somebody has harmed him, you will lose the trace of the killer. It wasn't until weeks later,

when the international media began reporting on his disappearance, that Taj says the police in Sweden began to take the case more seriously. Then it went to the BBC and Al Jazeera and Guardian and everywhere. Then they realized that, OK, it is going to be a big issue. is that, okay, it is going to be a big issue. Sajid's wife was one of the last to speak to him. And I asked his wife, was he upset on the day he disappeared? She said, no, he was cheerful.

Sajid and his wife, Shainaz, had only seen each other twice during his eight years in exile, meeting up in Uganda. Shainaz was still living in Balochistan with her two young children, but the couple remained very close. Sharing a love of ideas and books, they talked almost daily. What does she think happened? She has convinced that he has been killed. She doesn't know who has done that, but she doesn't blame anybody. She thinks that someone has done it. Sajid was trying to get his wife and children out of Balochistan so they could live together in Sweden. Was he concerned about their safety in Balochistan because he is such a prominent activist and journalist?

There are always the chances. You don't know what happens, when, to who, where and how. People know him, know them, the state know them, the drug lords know them. It's a well-known tactic of the Pakistani military to go after exiled dissident's relatives back home in Pakistan. So I'm just asking about that, Taj, is because if he had a chance of getting his family out, you think that would be pretty important to him and another motivation for wanting to be on this earth, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yes. He was so high profile and he was trying to get them here and then he thought once they're here, they would be safe. Once they're here, they would be safe. But that never

happened. And here's a key element to Sajid's disappearance that doesn't make sense to those who knew him. His family was on the verge of coming to Sweden. And was he excited about his wife and children joining him? Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Karina Jahani was Sajed's linguistics professor at the University of Uppsala. They were working together on a Baluchi English language dictionary. He was quiet, diligent, extremely intelligent, deep thinker. I think he thought many times much too deep to be good for him. Very kind, very nice.

Karina says Sajat talked about his wife and two young children often, how much he missed them. In 2019, Sajat finally received his permanent residency in Sweden. Actually, before his case was accepted, he was a bit worried. And on one occasion, he said to me, I've told Tad that if my case isn't accepted quickly, I will go back to Pakistan.

Maybe they will kill me, but I want to see my family quickly. I can't live without my family. I mean kill me, but I want to see my family quickly. I can't live without my family. I mean, yeah, yeah, he was very excited about his family. And he was very happy that his case came through quickly. That meant he could now apply to have his wife and children join him in Sweden. Everything was on the path to approval.

And Sajet was excited to start a new life with them. When were they supposed to arrive, do you know? You don't know exactly about the process of the paperback, but it was sort of in the pipe. It could have been before the summer, it could have been after the summer, but it would probably not have dragged out. In February 2020, his family had their immigration interview at the Swedish embassy in Pakistan, one of the last requirements in the process. But three weeks later, Sajid disappeared. His wife, Shanaz, is still struggling to understand what happened to him that day, says Wajid. And does she ever think that it could be a possibility that he commits

suicide? No, she doesn't think like that. Because when I asked her that, was she upset? Did he give any kind of signal that he might do anything like that? She said he was very okay. The day when he went missing the last day he talked to his children via video call and he was you know laughing and talking to his kids she said that i was about to pack my bags he told me that we are going to meet soon and he said to me that don't enroll my kids in that school, I will enroll them in Sweden. He was very positive about his life. And after four or five hours, he went missing. So when someone said that he might commit suicide,

I don't accept it. Sajid's last day began with a trip to Uppsala to drop off some of his belongings to the first apartment that would be totally his own in exile. He got an apartment, but it was a student apartment initially. And then he said, once my family get their visa, I can apply for a three-room or two-room apartment in Uppsala and I can get it, he said. Sajid made it to Uppsala. Police photos show that he had begun to settle into his new apartment. He had brought a small suitcase with clothes along with his laptop.

The police checked his computer for clues. They discovered a mass of files had been deleted that evening, more than 1,400 files. Their investigation determined that only someone with physical access to the computer and knowledge of Sajat's password could have done it. do they know for sure it was Sajat who deleted the files I think the police have more or less been able to I mean they have interviewed everyone in the flat nobody has seen any anyone nobody has heard any commotion. Nobody has seen any other strangers. Nobody has seen or heard anything. And after that, he dropped off his bag and his computer.

And then what is thought to have happened after that? We have no idea. We don't know anything. There was no cameras, no nothing showing him going somewhere? No, there are no cameras around the building. And the bus, there are cameras in the buses, but they are erased after one month. And since his body was not found until after seven weeks, the police couldn't get hold of the bus cameras. How Sajid ended up outside of Uppsala in the Fieris River remains a mystery.

But that is where his body was found on April 23, 2020, nearly two months after he disappeared. Karina was heartbroken with the discovery. Sajid was like a son to her. He was my boy. He was extremely talented. I had really hoped to get him onto the PhD program last autumn. Everything was set for him. But...

Yeah. yeah I would particularly his children to know that he was one of the best people you could ever encounter and work with that he was very much pursuing the truth I just recently got a picture of his tombstone and it said that very thing on the tombstone that he was a

pursuer of truth he wanted the truth to come out at all costs he had been through many struggles and maybe that had taken a hard toll on him mentally but basically the truth to come out at all costs. He had been through many struggles and maybe that had taken a hard toll on him mentally. But basically he was a very, very nice, gentle, kind, considerate,

diligent, intelligent young man who left this world far too soon. Far too soon. In the months that followed, Swedish authorities searched for signs of foul play but found nothing. Based on the autop that followed, Swedish authorities searched for signs of foul play but found nothing. Based on the autopsy report, death by drowning was indicated. The coroner also found no signs of external trauma, but reported it was difficult to assess as his body was badly decomposed.

And it could not be determined if Sajid's drowning was a result of accident, suicide, or murder. Without witnesses to his last moments, questions remain about what really happened to Sajat. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal.

I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. He was really starting a new life ahead with his family and his wife coming to Sweden with his new flat. coming to Sweden with his new flat. So this is why his sudden disappearance was quite striking to us because he has quite a life ahead and it was brutally, brutally stopped.

Daniel Bastard is with Reporters Without Borders. The organization defends persecuted journalists around the world. It stepped in after Sajed's disappearance. So we started to connect with our colleagues at Reporters Without Borders Sweden. We asked for a thorough investigation into his disappearance. And two months later, his body was found in a in Uppsala, dead, with no sign of violence. And starting from this point, the behavior of the Swedish police and the prosecutor was quite odd because the prosecutor was not very cooperative with our representative in Sweden, though she meant to be very transparent. But the police very quickly and the prosecutor very quickly

concluded that there was no murder in this case. But they couldn't prove that Sajid committed suicide. They couldn't prove that he was the victim of an accident. So it's very, very blurry. Had Sajid had death threats against him? He had death threats, of course, and that's why he left Pakistan in 2012. But lately, he didn't share any death threats with his friends or relatives. Of course, as a very active Baloch journalist and activists who would really tackle the issues that the Balochistan people have to face in Pakistan. He can be a target. There would be some hate campaigns with death threats

on social media, but there was no targeted death threats, let's say, coming from some officials. So there was no clear alarms just before he disappeared. So there was no clear alarms just before he disappeared. But there is no proof in one way, in the fact that he's been killed because of his work, but there is no proof that he hasn't been killed because of the work. So we are in this blurry situation, very grey situation, where I think there is a need for truth. very grey situation where I think there is a need for truth. Those who think that Sajid was killed because of his journalism are often suspicious of one organisation in particular, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI.

The ISI is the most powerful part of the Pakistani military's intelligence apparatus. Declan Walsh is a senior New York Times journalist who once ran the paper's Pakistan bureau, as well as reporting there for The Guardian. The ISI is undoubtedly the dominant aspect of the intelligence service. It is basically the sort of dirty tricks arm of the Pakistani military over the years that has engaged in political meddling. It's been accused of assassinations. It's been accused of involvement in the drug trade in the 1980s. It's clear that

the ISI has been accused many times of killing, I mean, down the years of killing reporters, of killing activists, of killing, you know, many people who are deemed to be a threat as they see it, as the military sees it, as a threat to the national security of Pakistan. I think what's changed in recent years are these allegations that the ISI has now taken its campaign of trying to enforce silence beyond the borders of Pakistan, or rather beyond the borders of the region. So Declan, in 2013, after nearly a decade of living and covering Pakistan, you were kicked out of the country for conducting, and I quote, undesirable activities. What exactly were these activities? So it was a few days before the election in 2013,

and I was at a social function in Islamabad with some friends and diplomats and others talking about the election, trying to anticipate what was going to happen. And then I got a call from an anonymous number instructing me to come back to my house, which I did. It was about midnight.

And when I got there, I found a pickup full of police, I think, sort of sitting outside my house, which I did. It was about midnight. And when I got there, I found a pickup full of police, I think, sort of sitting outside my house. And then there was a man who stepped forward in civilian clothes. He was wearing a sort of long, thick beard. You know, it's hard to know who he was from, but I would say at a guess he was probably with the intelligence services. And he was carrying a letter that he thrust into my hand. was a just a few lines long saying that my visa had been cancelled and that I had 72 hours to leave the country and at the time they never gave an explanation for why they just said in the letter it said that my visa was being cancelled on account of what it called my undesirable activities which is a pretty broad explanation.

But my own investigations I did into this afterwards, it became clear that one of the reasons they were most unhappy with my reporting was related to the trips I'd done in Balochistan. That included reporting on the abductions and killing of Baloch citizens by Pakistan's military and secret services. killing of Baloch citizens by Pakistan's military and secret services. I asked Declan Walsh what he makes of the deaths of Karima and Sajed in the West. What we've seen in recent years with these cases of Baloch activists who've disappeared and died in mysterious circumstances is the surfacing of these accusations that this is, in fact, some element of the Pakistani military or its intelligence wings that is trying to

silence these critics outside the country. Because there are several things linking most of these cases. One is a link to Balochistan. Another is that these are people who are trying to raise international awareness of this issue and they are beyond the reach of the Pakistani authorities because they are no longer in the country. The security services have done a very effective job at quelling the debate inside the country and controlling the conversation about what goes on in places like Balochistan. But for these people who live in Canada or in the Netherlands or in the United Arab Emirates, until some years ago, they were thought to be beyond the reach of the security services, which is why they felt comfortable

making those kind of statements from abroad. And what we've seen in the case of Karima Baloch and in the case of Sajid Hussein is that people who have been making these statements have died in at the very least unfortunate circumstances and whatever the truth of why they died those deaths have certainly been instrumentalized by the Pakistani security services to use them as a warning to others who would go abroad and speak out. Do you think it's within the realm of possibility that the ISI could have carried out assassinations against Karima or Sajjad, that they would dare to do an assassination in a Western country? Well, they have a history of being accused of assassination inside their own country with

considerable impunity, and they have done assassinations outside Pakistan's borders in the region. Now, doing it in a Western country is a more complicated thing. And yet, at the same time, I think we've seen a broad trend in recent years of dissidents from countries and from places where conflicts are not very well understood, dying or disappearing in strange circumstances. And frankly, there not being a lot of consequences for it. I mean, I'm specifically thinking of Rwanda, where we've seen in recent years, a large number of Rwandan dissidents in many parts of the world, including in Western countries like the UK, or in Sweden, have either come under threat or have been killed ostensibly by the security forces

from their own country. And yet, Rwanda does not seem to have suffered any serious consequences for those actions, and in some cases has even gloated over them. So, you know, the international environment seems to be quite permissive towards these sort of things taking place. And you get a sense that the authorities in a lot of these countries either aren't equipped to properly investigate these kind of things or don't have a great interest in them. But either way, when Sajid Hussein died, it was hard to know what had happened to him. But then Karima Baloch died, again, a mysterious death or, you know, not fully explained death. But often these things happen in the shadows without any satisfactory resolution. But when you look at the pattern, and what these victims have in common, you get a strong sense that at least in some of these cases, there is something of a campaign going on against

them. They went before their time. It was not the right time. They could do so much good to the world. Not. They could do so much good to the world. Not only us, but so much good to the world. Sajid and Karima, they were very, very special persons. Karima and Sajid were not only connected by their work, but by Karima's brother as well, Samir Mahrab.

Samir and Sajid had been close for years. In 2015, they co-founded the Balochistan Times. I asked Samir what he remembers most about his friend. Sajid was a literary person. He was obsessed with literature. He loved Kafka. So much so, Sajid's nickname was Kafka. He loved other existential writers.

Jean-Paul Sartre or Camus. They wrote extensively about the human existence. He also loved Joseph Heller's satirical war novel, Catch-22. This guy's, one of the favorite literary characters was Usarian, who was an anti-hero in Catch-22. who was an anti-hero in Kesh-22. He used to say, eventually all wars will push us towards being less and less human. And then even we think we are fighting on the right side, but eventually we will lose some part of our humanity.

Like he checked Pakistan. He wrote about disappearances. He says so many things about missing persons. But he was not kind of a person who, you know, he wrote about disappearances he says so many things about missing persons but he was not kind of a person who you know close his eye

what Baloch Nationalist was doing and always he was on guard like his biggest fear was

we're gonna lose our sense or our moral compass as a society due to the violence

due to this Pakistan is doing it with us, but we will get immune. The death will just be a number for us. And then he will always criticize Baloch society. And he said, we are struggling against an unjust society. And we are in the process of building a just society. If we don't promote the process of building a just society. If we don't promote the culture of self-criticism

and open political culture, this will cost us. We will end up creating a mini Pakistan if we let our guards down. So this was very shocking for the Baloch society because we lost our compass, I think. Sajid was our compass, our society's compass. I asked Samir if he thinks Sajid died by suicide. As a friend, I will never believe it. This is Sajid. This is Sajid I'm talking about.

He was a very, very rational person. He had two kids and he loved his kids. He loved his wife and he used to talk about his kids. He was always talking about his daughter. He was always talking about how they were going to join him back in Sweden. Samir also says his friend shied away from anything that could cause him physical pain or discomfort, even when it came to joking around in rough housing with his friends. He would immediately say, please don't do this, because I admit I'm a coward.

I cannot bear pain. Because of this, Samir questions the drowning. And there's another reason. One of Sajid's least favorite things, something he despised, cold water. Samir, you couldn't see him jumping in cold water in Sweden in March, in the water, to die. I couldn't. I couldn't see him. This thing always puzzled me because I know Sajid. For Sajid to jump in a cold water, if he wanted to commit, let's say he wanted to commit suicide for a second,

he would choose the easiest way, the less painful way. He was not a person who tolerated pain. I would never believe it. Sajid doing this, he's jumping into the cold water. I will not believe it because I'm his friend and same goes for Karima. Sajid was not only close to Samir, he was close to Karima as well. She had even visited him in Sweden. Sajid was her mentor. She used to regularly speak to him. And when he died, she was very heartbroken. Karima's friend Kiran Nazish.

She's a founder of an advocacy and support organization for women journalists around the world. She now lives in Canada. She says Sajid's death loomed large in Karima's life. Which Karima used to be very stressed about as well, and she had spoken to me about that extensively, about her fear about this happened to him, and maybe this could happen to me.

She had said that. She said this to me. Did she think that Sajid was murdered? Yes, she thought that Sajid was murdered. I would say he was murdered too. And she also thought that the recent threats she was getting, even, you know, sometimes she, you know, she wasn't sure if she was right about somebody following her or not, but she used to feel like someone's following her. Through Wadjet, I was able to review the police report on his brother's death. Through Wajet, I was able to review the police report on his brother's death. It details a months-long investigation, which ultimately turned up no conclusive evidence on how exactly Sajat ended up in the Firas River. The case has been well investigated. I'm not saying that they have not investigated the case well and their intention was bad.

case well and their intention was bad but i think there is much need of evidence to come up in this case and they should have been able to come up with more evidences and more footages of him in this case to give us at least certainty about the case. Because living up with this uncertainty that it could be a suicide, it could be an accident, or there might be any criminal activity in his death, is very unbearable. The Swedish police and the prosecutor's office in Stockholm both concluded Sajet's death was not a crime. A spokesperson for the Swedish police wrote to us and I quote, the investigation work has been done thoroughly and

with meticulous accuracy. I also spoke to Ulrika Borg, the lawyer hired by Sajet's family to advocate for them in Sweden. And so do you think this is it then? There's no more, there's no future then in terms of, unless something major came up, it's finished now, this investigation? Yes, yes. So it's nothing to do more now. If something happens, of course, if there is some new information, then it... I don't know, in murder cases in Sweden, there are no, I don't remember the English word, limits of something.

Statute of limitations is a term she's looking for. If something happens, if there is some new information, they can open the case again. But they need some new information. But in both Karima's case in Canada and Sajid's case in Sweden, police determined their deaths were not the result of foul play, and their cases have been closed. Samir says there has not been enough investigation for authorities to reach this conclusion in either country. Like most of the Baloch community, they say it is done by Pakistan.

But to be honest with you, there is no evidence. Without any evidence, I will not point any finger towards Pakistan. This would be the most irresponsible thing to do because if you ask me I don't know really what happened but I would urge the Canadian law enforcement the Swedish law enforcement if there is a shred of evidence that points towards a wrongdoing they should investigate it thoroughly and leave no stone unturned because there are people, there are journalists living in West thinking they are secure,

they are very outspoken about Pakistan. If, God forbid, if somebody was involved and they were murdered, these two persons, this would open a Pandora's box. murder these two persons. This would open a Pandora's box. A Pandora's box, because there are many other Pakistani dissidents who have sought safety in the West. If Karima and Sajjad were murdered, who might be next? Coming up on The Kill List.

Coming up on The Kill List. Intelligence agencies are trying to convince dissidents in exile that, you know, if Karima and Sajid could be killed, then what about them? And then the anchor says, you're talking about international assassinations. He's like, yeah, but we're not going to claim them, right? And then he laughs. I had to go into hiding because our house was raided multiple times. My friends were detained illegally and tortured to get information about me. And in the midst of all of this, I got to know that I was placed on a state kill list. I was given information this morning that I'm on the top of that list.

Oh my goodness. information this morning that I'm on the top of that list. Oh my goodness. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for an interview to discuss the allegations against the state that have been reported in this series. The Kill List is created by me, Mary Link, and written and produced along with Alina Ghosh. Mixing and sound design by Julia Whitman. Studio direction by Nancy Regan. Our story editor is Chris Oak. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Fact-checking by Emily Mathieu.

Legal advice from Sean Mormon. Special thanks to Lateef Johar. Our senior producer is Cecil Fernandez. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. Thank you. need of support. And if you like this series, please help others find it by leaving us a review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.