(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, president of the Somali regional administration of Puntland (which declared independence in August 1998), RSF protested the arrest of Mohamed Abdulkadir Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the private weekly “Sahan”, in Puntland. RSF urged him to do everything in his power to ensure the journalist is immediately […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, president of the Somali regional administration of Puntland (which declared independence in August 1998), RSF protested the arrest of Mohamed Abdulkadir Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the private weekly “Sahan”, in Puntland. RSF urged him to do everything in his power to ensure the journalist is immediately released. “As far as we know, he did nothing more than exercise his right to inform, as guaranteed in Article 6.2 of the Charter for Puntland State,” added RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard.
According to information collected by RSF, Abdulkadir Ahmed was arrested by police in Bossasso (Regional State of Puntland) on 11 July 2000. He was beaten and taken to the town’s port, where he was put inside a container. He had been writing articles in support of the ongoing Somali peace talks in Djibouti, and criticising the Puntland “governement” for boycotting the conference, which aims to restore a central government in Somalia (there has not been one since 1991). Puntland has refused to attend the talks, which were initiated by President Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, and which started on 2 May.
RSF also recalled that three others journalists, Abdulkadir Ali and Mohamed Deeq, of “Sahan”, and Ahmed Mohamed Ali, of the newspaper “Mandeeq”, were detained for one week in Puntland in August 1999 (see IFEX alert of 6 August 1999).
