Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain was buried in his ancestral town near the bordering regions of Balochistan. His dead body was flown from Sweden to Balochistan where he was buried in a local cemetery in Nazirabad on Friday evening. Other than his family, friends and relatives, scores of other people attended his funeral.
Sajid Hussain, an exiled Baloch journalist, was living in political asylum in Sweden. Earlier in March, he went missing after boarding a train from Stockholm to Uppsala. After two months, his dead body was found in a river near Uppsala.
His family, friends and acquaintances claim that he was murdered. Reporters without Borders (RSF), a Paris-based journalists’ organisation, alleged that Mr Hussain’s mysterious disappearance and subsequent death could have been organized by the Pakistani intelligence agencies – ISI and MI – due to his work as a journalist.
A recent investigation by the National Unit Against International and Organized Crime at the Swedish Prosecution Authority concluded that Sajid Hussain was not murdered and closed the case. His body was then handed over to his family.
Before fleeing Pakistan in 2012, Sajid Hussain worked with leading and widely-circulated English dailies, like Daily Times and The News. He also worked with international news agencies like Reuters. He mainly reported on the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan and the human rights abuses, like drug trafficking, kill-and-dumps and enforced disappearances. Before his disappearance, he was the chief editor of The Balochistan Times, an online English magazine commenting on and reporting the major issues in Balochistan.