The Islamic militia controlling Somalia’s capital said Saturday it was investigating the slaying of an award-winning Swedish journalist, who was fatally shot while covering a demonstration in Mogadishu.
The chaotic country has no police force, and the militia said it had assembled a team of 10 former police and military officers to investigate Martin Adler’s killing.
“We have asked them to help us investigate this case,” said Abdullahim Isa Adul, secretary to the chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, which seized control of the capital and surrounding areas this month.
He said that several people had come forward with information about the killing, but he offered no details.
Adler, 47, was shot once in the back Friday by an unidentified gunman who disappeared as demonstrators fled in panic, witnesses said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross was flying his body out of Mogadishu on Saturday.
The shooting was an embarrassment for the militia group, which has pledged to pacify Mogadishu. Its chairman, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, pledged immediately after Adler’s killing to track down those who “are behind this criminal act.”
The demonstrators had been hailing a mutual recognition pact this week between the Islamic militia and the largely powerless, U.N.-backed transitional government. Demonstrators also were protesting alleged Ethiopian interference in Somali affairs.
Mogadishu is among the most dangerous cities in the world. Assault rifles and pistols are commonplace, and disputes are settled either through revenge attacks or clan-based Islamic courts.
International journalists have been stoned or heckled while reporting on recent demonstrations. Anti-foreigner sentiment has been stoked by reports that widely despised warlords defeated by the Islamic leaders this month were backed by the CIA.
U.S. officials have accused the Islamists of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Adler, who is survived by his wife and two children, won numerous awards, including the 2001 Amnesty International Media Award, a Silver Prize for investigative journalism at the 2001 New York Film Festival and the 2004 Rory Peck Award for Hard News. He had worked in more than two dozen war zones, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo and Sierra Leone.
In February 2005, an unidentified gunman in Mogadishu shot dead British Broadcasting Corp. Africa producer Kate Peyton.
Source: AP, June 24, 2006
