Top inset: Wahid Kashify. Bottom inset: Arezu Z. Kashify. Background: Law enforcement officers escort Wahid Kashify in U.S. custody (Spokane County Sheriff’s Office).
A fugitive suspected in his wife’s death, whose body was found in her apartment freezer in Washington state, has been returned to the United States to face charges in the murder after being extradited from the Netherlands, where he was captured during a volleyball tournament near Amsterdam in 2022.
Wahid Kashify faces a first-degree murder charge in the death of his wife, 24-year-old Arezu Z. Kashify, authorities said in a news release.
“There are no ends that we will not, and have not gone to, to bring Mr. Kashify back here to stand trial for this senseless act of murder,” Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said in a statement.
The case came to light when one of the victim’s friends reported her missing on May 30, 2019, after she hadn’t been seen or heard from for days. The day she was reported missing was also the day a family friend who occasionally watched the couple’s children contacted Child Protective Services alerting them that he had dropped off his children just after midnight on May 26, 2019, officials said. He told the family friend his wife had packed her things and left, said he needed to go to work and needed someone to watch the children, deputies said in the release.
The following day, Wahid Kashify stopped in for two short visits, left some child care items for the children, told the family friend that either he or his wife would pick up the children soon and then disappeared, authorities said. The children were eventually placed in the care of Child Protective Services.
Authorities quickly learned Wahid Kashify had boarded a flight to Dubai on May 28, 2019. Days later, law enforcement tracked down the couple’s Toyota Sienna at the Spokane International Airport and found his cellphone. On it, investigators found a video of him confessing to the murder, authorities said in a November 2022 news conference.
Detectives searching the couple’s apartment on June 4, 2019, found Arezu Kashify’s body hidden beneath a false bottom of a chest freezer, officials said. A warrant was issued for Wahid Kashify’s arrest days later, and a yearslong investigation across three continents was launched to find him.
He was found in October 2022 after U.S. authorities learned the avid volleyball player could possibly be attending a volleyball tournament near Amsterdam at that time. Police relayed that information to their European counterparts, who found the suspect and arrested him on Oct. 29, 2022. He was leaving a locker room at the gym where the tournament was being held, officials said in the news release.
He spoke in a 2015 article in The Spokesman-Review titled “Afghan family targeted by terrorists finds refuge in Spokane.”
The article said the couple had been in the U.S. as part of an immigration visa program for refugees who helped the U.S. military or government personnel. He was a translator and interpreter who fought with U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
He described riding in a convoy in a Humvee and being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, taking fire from the Taliban and blacking out.
“That was the weirdest thing in my life. It was very scary,” Kashify, who at the time was a criminal justice student at Spokane Community College, told the newspaper. “I see dead people all around me. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, am I alive? Am I dead? Am I in a grave?’”
He was being held on $5 million bail at the Spokane County Jail, online booking records show. He’s set for a preliminary hearing on July 30.
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