Swedish police announced on Friday that a Pakistani journalist, who left his homeland after receiving death threats, was dead. Sajid Hussain, who was the editor of an ethnic Baloch news website, went missing on March 2.
“His body was found on April 23 in the Fyris river outside Uppsala,” police spokesperson Jonas Eronen told reporters.
A press freedom charity alleged Pakistani intelligence services were the reason behind Hussain’s disappearance in March.
Hussain was working as a part-time professor in Uppsala, about 60 kilometres north of Stockholm, before he went missing.
According to the police, Hussain’s death could be a result of an accident or a suicide. However, murder cannot be ruled out as his death could also be linked to his work as a journalist in Pakistan.
While working as a journalist, Hussain mostly wrote about drug trafficking, forced disappearances and a long-running nationalist insurgency in Balochistan province.
His wife had indicated that Hussain, who had exposed a drug kingpin, was being followed. His house in Quetta was once broken into when he was out investigating a story. After this, he left Pakistan in September 2012 and never returned.
The editorial board of Balochistan Times shared the news that Hussain had been missing from Uppsala since March 2 and that a formal case had been filed with the Swedish police on March 3.
A friend of Hussain, Taj Baloch, said he had met Hussain a day before he disappeared and everything seemed fine. But his phone was switched off the very next day.
