A British man has been found guilty of plotting to kill a Pakistani political blogger in the Netherlands after being hired as a hitman with a fee of £100,000.
A jury trial convicted supermarket worker Muhammed Gohir Khan, 31, of plotting to kill the blogger and liberal activist Ahmad Waqass Goraya after being recruited by middlemen apparently based in Pakistan.
The judge postponed sentencing until March 11.
Prosecutor Alison Morgan said Goraya, who lives with his wife and two children in the Netherlands, appeared to have been targeted for speaking out against the Pakistani authorities in satirical social media posts.
Khan was hired by “others who appeared to be based in Pakistan”, Morgan told the jury at Kingston-upon-Thames.
In 2018, Goraya had “received information from the FBI that he was on a kill list”, she added, saying he feared an orchestrated attack.
“He believes that some of the threats that he received were from internet trolls” but that other was, in fact, being led and orchestrated, she alleged.
Goraya, who has lived outside Pakistan for more than a decade, did not attend the hearings.
