Pakistani human rights activist Karima Baloch found dead in Canada

A Pakistani human rights activist who had fled to Canada has been found dead in Toronto, Canadian police said on Tuesday (22).

Karima Mehrab, who was also known as Karima Baloch, had escaped to Canada in 2015 after the Pakistani government accused her of terrorism, according to CBC.

"It is currently being investigated as a non-criminal death and there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances," Toronto police said in a statement.

Amnesty International described her death as "deeply shocking" and called on police to conduct a full investigation.

"The perpetrators must be brought to justice without recourse to the death penalty," the rights group said on Twitter.

Mehrab, 37, had defended human rights in Pakistan and campaigned for autonomy for Baluchistan, a province in the southwest of the country that has been plagued by sectarian violence.

Her disappearance near Lake Ontario was reported by Toronto police on Sunday. Her body was found Monday morning.

In May, the body of a Sajid Hussain, a journalist from Baluchistan who had been living in exile in Sweden after fleeing Pakistan, was found in a river near the city of Uppsala.

Hussain had written about drug trafficking, forced disappearances and a long-running insurgency before seeking refuge in Sweden in 2017.

Police said it was difficult to tell from the autopsy if his death had been the result of a crime, an accident or suicide.

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© Agence France-Presse

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