SOMALIA: FIVE ISLAMIC STATE AND AL-SHABAAB MILITANTS EXECUTED IN PUBLIC IN PUNTLAND

November 13, 2019:

Five men belonging to the Islamic State group and Al Shabaab Amniyaad on 7 November 2019 were publicly executed by firing squad by a local military court in Puntland.
The men were identified as Ibrahim Guudow, Farah Said Farah, Abdulkadir Sheikh, Shafici Hussain Moalim and Hassam Lamoh Aden.
The five prisoners were arrested during a security operation in the town of Bosaso. According to media reports, the authorities launched this operation after a military base was attacked by militants in June 2017, killing dozens of people in the village of Af-Urur. The executed men were between 19 and 39 years old. According to the judge of the regional military court, Awil Ahmed Farah, one of the men was an Islamic state activist who had been convicted of the murder of a police officer. He stated that “I want to confirm that being a terrorist means… a death sentence”.
The judge then went on to point out that “killing someone in Mogadishu or Bosaso is the same thing. They admitted that they had fought in Mogadishu and killed people. All five convicted persons were publicly executed by firing squad in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. Four other men accused of belonging to Al-Shabaab Amniyaad, a branch of the murder and suicide bombing group, also appeared separately before a military court in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital”.