Somali broadcast journalist unlawfully arrested in Mogadishu

From: AIPS
With Somalia listed as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists to work in the world, the country’s federal police arrested a senior broadcast journalist in the capital Mogadishu on Sunday. The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) is protesting Sunday’s arrest of the broadcast journalist by the federal police.  Nuradin Hassan Ibrahim, editor of SkyFM Radio in Mogadishu, has been arrested at the Crimes Investigations Department (CID) headquarters in Mogadishu, following a call to summon him from the officials.  Nuradin was then questioned on how his station had obtained news about a passport stolen from an official stationed at the Prime Minister’s office. Nuradin reportedly answered all the questions satisfactorily, but was arrested due to the influence of General Abdullahi Gafow, head of Immigration and Naturalization Services who lodged a complaint against SkyFM at the CID. “This amounts to physical intimidation of a journalist and appears to be in direct breach of Somalia’s provisional Constitution. It clearly demonstrates how journalists in Somalia are a soft target for the authorities who are supposed to uphold principles of rule of law, and a  respect for independent media to report without fear of retaliation,” said Omar Faruk Osman, Secretary General of NUSOJ. NUSOJ call on the Federal Police to immediately release Nuradin Hassan Ibrahim, and allow him to exercise his constitutional freedom as a citizen in general, and as a journalist in particular.  SkyFM is a sister station of Radio Shabelle, which has been subject to systematic abuses a number of times in the last couple of years.