The Islamic courts controlling the Somali capital have launched a massive manhunt for the killer of a Swedish journalist slain by an unknown gunman in Mogadishu a day earlier.
The courts’ Chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said that a probe was under way and called on residents to volunteer information that could lead to the arrest of the killers of Martin Adler, a Swedish photographer and reporter who was shot dead at a rally here Friday.
“We will follow the footsteps of the killer until we get him,” Ahmed told a press conference in the capital on Saturday. “The manhunt would go on until we catch the killer.”
The killing came less than 24 hours after the interim government and the Islamic courts penned a mutual recognition pact that called for an end to violence that has engulfed the capital and nearby key towns in recent months.
“The killing of the journalist is a setback to the credibility of the Islamic courts. Maybe that was the work of people who wanted to undermine the courts,” said Abdullahi Muktar Hassanow, a Mogadishu resident.
Some witnesses said the shooting may have been linked to the publication by a Danish newspaper last year of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that enraged many in the Muslim world, including Somalia where some believed Adler to be Danish.
“It is not good to kill a journalist even if he or she is Danish,” said 24-year-old student Mohamed Haji Abdi.
Adler, whose body was flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Saturday, had arrived in Mogadishu around 10 days ago. He became the 26th journalist to be killed this year, according to a tally by the Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) which also slammed the killing.
“This was an appalling murder, one that turns journalists into pawns in the hands of rival armed clans that use such crimes in their battle for power,” the press freedom group said in a statement.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “deeply shocked” by Adler’s murder and called on the transitional government and the Union of Islamic Courts to ensure his killer was caught.
“Somalia’s transitional government and the Islamic courts which control Mogadishu must now make it a priority to find and prosecute his killer,” CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement.
Residents of Mogadishu echoed that sentiment, saying the courts now had the chance to show their commitment to security and disprove fears that their gains in recent months will lead to a rise in Islamic extremism.
“Now it is the time to know whether the Islamic courts are capable of dealing with violence and crime. Let them arrest the killer,” said Ali Abdikarim, a grocer in the capital.
According to the CPJ, at least 13 other journalists have been killed in Somalia since the Horn of Africa nation fell into anarchy in 1991, after the ouster of former dictator Siad Barre.
Since then, Somalia, home to some 10 million people, has lacked an effective government and has been split into a patchwork of fiefdoms governed by unruly warlords.
But early this month, militia loyal to the city’s Islamic courts seized the Somali capital after ousting a US-backed warlord alliance following four months of fighting that saw more than 360 deaths.
Despite a mutual recognistion pact signed in Khartoum between the courts and the transitional government on Thursday, Mogadishu has remained tense with anti-US sentiment running high.
Demonstrators at a rally Friday burned the flags of the United States and Ethiopia, which the courts have accused of sending troops to back the warlords.
Ahmed said however that the Islamic court’s objective was the return of stability in the war-torn nation.
Source: AFP, June 24, 2006
