Family and team revive Arshad Sharif’s YouTube channel

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published 1 hour ago |  JP Staff Report

Arshad Sharif’s family and former colleagues have revived his YouTube channel to share memories and personal stories, three years after his murder in Kenya.

Summary

ISLAMABAD — The YouTube channel of slain Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif has been revived by his family, with support from his longtime colleague and former executive producer Adeel Raja. The channel, Arshad Sharif Official, has around 449,000 subscribers and has remained largely inactive since Sharif’s murder in 2022.

Appearing in a video on the channel, Raja said the decision to revive it followed repeated requests from Sharif’s son, Ali Arshad Sharif, and other family members who inherited the channel after his death. He said the family wanted to keep Sharif’s digital presence alive as a space to remember his life and work.

Preserving Arshad Sharif’s legacy

Raja said that although discussions about continuing the channel began about three years ago, practical and ethical concerns delayed the decision. He said neither he nor other members of Sharif’s former team wanted to appear as replacements or to project personal ambition through the channel.

He said the revived channel would not function as a news outlet. Instead, it would focus on Sharif’s personality, memories from his professional life, and lesser-known aspects of his journey as a journalist. Raja said he and other former colleagues would appear occasionally, once or twice a week, while Sharif’s sons would manage the channel.

Former colleagues reconnect with the audience

Raja also referred to other members of Sharif’s former production team, including Ali Usman, who produced and edited many of Sharif’s programs. He noted that he himself was dismissed from ARY News after Sharif’s departure and later launched his own YouTube channel.

He said the revived series aims to share behind-the-scenes stories about how Sharif worked, the decisions he made, and the principles that guided his journalism. Raja said the initiative would continue weekly as long as the family wished to maintain it.

Context of exile and killing

Arshad Sharif was one of Pakistan’s most prominent television journalists and hosted ARY News’s current affairs program Power Play. In August 2022, he left Pakistan after facing multiple sedition cases and citing threats linked to his reporting. He first went into exile in the United Arab Emirates and later moved to Kenya.

On October 23, 2022, Sharif was shot dead by Kenyan police near Magadi Road outside Nairobi. Kenyan authorities said the killing occurred after the vehicle he was traveling in failed to stop at a police checkpoint, describing it as a case of mistaken identity. The explanation was disputed by Sharif’s family, Pakistani journalists, and international press freedom groups, who called for transparent and independent investigations into his death.

In July 2024, the High Court of Kajiado in Kenya ruled that Sharif’s killing was “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional.” The court ordered the Kenyan government to pay 10 million Kenyan shillings (about USD 78,000) in compensation to his family and directed authorities to complete investigations and prosecute those responsible.

But the ruling fell short of identifying or punishing the masterminds behind the attack. Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) has since filed an appeal, further delaying justice. The slow progress has deepened frustration among Sharif’s family and Pakistan’s media community, who see the case as a test of international accountability.

KEY POINTS:

• Arshad Sharif’s YouTube channel has been revived by his family with support from former colleagues
• Adeel Raja said the channel will focus on memories and personal stories, not news
• Sharif’s sons will manage the channel while former team members appear occasionally
• The revival comes three years after Sharif’s killing in Kenya
• Journalists and rights groups continue to seek clarity over the circumstances of his death

ATTRIBUTION: Based on a publicly available video statement by Adeel Raja.