Most of these press freedom violations were connected to coverage of national security issues, including the protracted conflict between the government and the militant group Al-Shabaab.

Since Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared a “total war” on the Al-Shabaab following his 2022 election, the government has attempted to censor media coverage of the militant group’s “extremism ideology.” Amid a deteriorating security situation, with Al-Shabaab’s recent bombing near a presidential convoy and attacks  on strategic government positions, authorities have stepped up efforts to control public discourse.

On March 6, Information Minister Daud Aweis Jama said there was a ban on publishing “statements or news” that could threaten national security or “misuse or fabricate information, whether directly or indirectly.” Press freedom and human rights groups interpreted these broad directives, which echoed an October 2022 statement by the administration, as censorship.  

“The government is really trying to control the narrative, to shape discussions around how it is handling the security situation in the country,” said Abdullahi Hassan, a conflict researcher covering Sudan and Somalia at rights group Amnesty International. “The repression against the media and the attacks on journalists that you are seeing are aimed at silencing government critics and are directly related to those efforts to shape the narrative”

Since March 15, CPJ has documented the following violations in the Somali capital Mogadishu, based on media reports, research by local rights groups the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ), and interviews with affected journalists:

● On March 15, National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) officers raided the home of RTN Somali TV reporter Bahjo Abdullahi Salad and arrested her. Authorities held her for about four hours in connection to a now-deleted TikTok video, in which she commented on the failure to clear rubbish in a Mogadishu district.

●  On March 18, police raided the offices of the Risaala Media Corporation after the station aired footage of the site of the bomb attack on the presidential convoy and briefly detained five journalists. Officers briefly held at least 17 other journalists covering the attack as well.

●  On March 26, police raided the family home of online journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Osman Bulbul, after he published a series of interviews critical of NISA and covered Al-Shabaab actions. Mohamed Ibrahim, who also works as the information and human rights secretary at SJS, was not home at the time but went into hiding for about three weeks. He told CPJ he was continuing to keep a low profile due to safety concerns.

● On March 28, police officers briefly detained three Himilo TV journalists — Abdirazak Haji Sidow, Anisa Abdiaziz Hussein, and Abdullahi Abdulqadir Ahmed — as well as two journalists from the privately owned news outlet Mustaqbal Media — Abdirizak Abdullahi Adan and Abdirahman Barre Hussein —  while they were covering a protest against sexual violence.

● On April 1, police raided the offices of Five Somali TV and arrested journalists Mohamed Roraye, Ahmed Mohamud, Mohamed Abdi Afgooye, Dahir Dayah, following a report alleging the disappearance of police officers. The journalists were released later that day.

● On April 28, police arrested Risaala TV journalists Abuukar Mohamed Keynaan and Abdirashid Adow Ibrahim while they were covering a mortar attack, accusing them of exaggerating the Al-Shabaab’s actions. They were released unconditionally the same day.

● On April 29, security agents shot at and briefly detained Shabelle Media Network journalists Shukri Aabi Abdi and Najib Farah Mohamed as well as Hiiraanweyn TV correspondent Hussein Osman Makaraan and Saab TV’s Deeq Moalim Jiinow while they were interviewing displaced people. The journalists were not injured.

● On May 5, at around 1 a.m., NISA agents raided the home and media studio of journalist Mohamed Omar Baakaay, who runs a news channel on YouTube,while he was away, the journalist told CPJ. The officers beat and arrested Baakaay’s 17-year-old brother and MM Somali TV’s Bashir Ali Shire, who was also staying there.Authorities released them later that day, without providing reason for the arrest, said Baakaay.

Information minister Daud Aweis and police spokesperson Abdifatah Adan Hassan did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app. CPJ also emailed NISA, the Somali presidency, and the information ministry for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Mohamed Abukar Dabashe’s death is devastating. Unfortunately, he joins a long list of Somali journalists killed in Al-Shabaab attacks with impunity,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Somali authorities should investigate the killing of Mohamed Abukar Dabashe and desist from further intimidation and censorship of journalists who are already operating under difficult circumstances.”

Mohamed Abukar’s body was found in a collapsed building, where he is reported to have lived, near the attack site. He worked with Risaala Media Corporation until 2023, and had recently been publishing his journalism on Facebook and the YouTube news channel Sirta Waraka, Risaala’s director Mohamed Abduwahab Abdullahi told CPJ.

Armed police raided Risaala’s offices about 20 minutes after it broadcast footage of the explosion site, ordered its radio and television channels off air, and arrested reporters Ali Abdullahi Ibrahim and Hamda Hassan Ahmed; camera operators Mohamed Said Nur and Abdullahi Sharif Ali; and technician Liban Abdullahi Hassan, according to Mohamed Abduwahab, who is also secretary general of the Somali Media Association, and a statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate rights group.

The journalists were detained for about two hours at a police station, where they were warned not to broadcast such content, and released without charge. Risaala had resumed operations by the evening. 

Police also briefly detained at least 17 other journalists at the attack site and questioned them at a local station about their coverage, three journalists familiar with the incident, who are not being named due to safety concerns, told CPJ.

Police spokesperson Abdifatah Adan Hassan told CPJ by phone that police were trying to verify the identities of journalists at the site but did not make any arrests and that Risaala staff were asked to leave their office for safety.

CPJ’s calls to request comment from information minister Daud Aweis were not answered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Two commercial banks, Premier Bank and Dahabshil Bank International told the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) on April 13 and April 17, respectively, that they had suspended the organization’s accounts on orders from the Banadir Regional Court, whose jurisdiction includes the Somali capital Mogadishu, according to copies of the banks’ emails reviewed by CPJ.

On April 15, IBS Bank orally informed SJS officials in Mogadishu that it had suspended the organization’s accounts, also citing court orders, according to Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, the syndicate’s secretary general, who spoke to CPJ via email and messaging app.  

Abdalle told CPJ, that as of April 19, SJS and its lawyers have not officially received copies of the court’s suspension orders. However, Abdalle said the organization independently acquired, through its sources, a copy of the court’s directive to Premier Bank. In the April 9 letter, which SJS republished with a statement on April 14, the court said that the suspension order was in response to a report submitted by Somalia’s Office of the Attorney General, alleging that Abdalle and “his media organization used a fake media license to open the account and conduct illegal press activities while the organization named Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) is not registered.” The letter also authorized the attorney general to investigate SJS on these allegations and asked the banks to cooperate with this inquiry.

In an April 16  statement published on Facebook, Somalia’s Office of the Attorney General confirmed that it had submitted a report to the court, reiterated the allegations that SJS registered its accounts with “fake documents,” and said that the organization had breached sections of Somalia’s penal code that criminalize defamation, without specifying whom the organization was accused of defaming. The statement said that the attorney general would file charges against SJS once the investigations were concluded.

“The investigations into the allegations of criminal offenses by SJS are apparent acts of retaliation and the latest attacks on an organization that has been staunchly vocal about Somalia’s poor press freedom record,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi. “Somali authorities should stop the legal harassment of the syndicate and reform the country’s laws to scrap criminal defamation, in line with international and regional standards on freedom of expression.”

SJS is under investigation for allegedly breaching sections of the penal code that punish the falsification of documents and certificates with up to 64 months in prison and impose a prison term of up to three years for defamation convictions, according to the statement by the attorney general, which does not state whether any specific SJS official would be criminally liable for these offenses. The organization is also accused of contravening sections of Somalia’s press law that require media outlets and training organizations to register with the ministry of information or face fines and prosecutions.

Abdalle said that the freeze on the SJS bank accounts was already having a “significant impact” on SJS’ work, but the organization remains “committed to advocating for press freedom, the safety of journalists, and human rights.”

He added, “We are actively engaging our legal team to address this matter, but our efforts can only succeed if the rule of law is upheld.”

CPJ has documented previous incidents targeting the organization, including  the arbitrary detention of the Syndicate’s staff, including Abdalle, and the organization’s human rights secretary Mohamed Ibrahim Osman Bulbul. In September 2023, cyberattacks temporarily knocked the organization’s website offline.

The office of the attorney general did not respond to CPJ’s queries sent via email; and Attorney General Sulayman Mohamed Mohamoud did not respond to requests for comment sent via messaging application or answer CPJ’s calls.

In their emails responding to CPJ’s queries, Premier Bank Head of Operations, Mahad Ahmed Mohamed, and Dahabshil Bank International’s Head of Operations, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamoud, declined to comment on the account suspensions.

Mahad said that Premier Bank is restricted from disclosing client information by “strict privacy laws and ethical banking standards.” Mohamed told CPJ to consult the bank’s email to SJS for detailed information.

IBS Bank did not immediately respond to an email from CPJ requesting comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Mohamed Ibrahim Osman Bulbul endured nearly two months of detention and faced punitive legal proceedings simply because he dared to report allegations of corruption,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “While it is a relief that the case against Mohamed is over, Somali authorities owe it to him to investigate the circumstances under which he was detained arbitrarily and ensure that no journalists suffer similar ordeals in the future.”

Somali police detained Mohamed, an editor with the privately owned Kaab TV and the information and human rights secretary for the local press rights group Somali Journalists Syndicate, on August 17, a day after he published a report on allegations of corruption within the police force.

He was denied access to his lawyer and family and was charged in September with anti-national propaganda, bringing the Somali nation into contempt, causing false alarm, and publishing false news, according to the charge sheet reviewed by CPJ and a Somali Journalists Syndicate statement.

On September 25, a court in Mogadishu ruled that since Mohamed was a journalist, he could not be charged under the penal code and directed the prosecution to present new charges in conformity with the country’s media law, according to statements by the syndicate and a person familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity citing fear of professional retaliation. 

When the prosecution failed to present new charges against Mohamed during an October 11 hearing, the court discontinued the case.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Mohamed Ibrahim Osman Bulbul endured nearly two months of detention and faced punitive legal proceedings simply because he dared to report allegations of corruption,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “While it is a relief that the case against Mohamed is over, Somali authorities owe it to him to investigate the circumstances under which he was detained arbitrarily and ensure that no journalists suffer similar ordeals in the future.”

Somali police detained Mohamed, an editor with the privately owned Kaab TV and the information and human rights secretary for the local press rights group Somali Journalists Syndicate, on August 17, a day after he published a report on allegations of corruption within the police force.

He was denied access to his lawyer and family and was charged in September with anti-national propaganda, bringing the Somali nation into contempt, causing false alarm, and publishing false news, according to the charge sheet reviewed by CPJ and a Somali Journalists Syndicate statement.

On September 25, a court in Mogadishu ruled that since Mohamed was a journalist, he could not be charged under the penal code and directed the prosecution to present new charges in conformity with the country’s media law, according to statements by the syndicate and a person familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity citing fear of professional retaliation. 

When the prosecution failed to present new charges against Mohamed during an October 11 hearing, the court discontinued the case.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The findings provide new insight into how private companies are being used by malicious actors to try to suppress online reporting around the globe.

In its new report, Qurium said services from U.S. companies phoenixNAP and Aliat Data and U.K. company IPXO had been used to conduct cyberattacks against media websites during August of this year. Those sites belong to the Somali Journalists Syndicate press freedom group, Turkmen.news, an exile-run site covering Turkmenistan, and Nacionale, in Kosovo. All three outlets have previously faced censorship and intimidation efforts, including the arrest of employees, physical violence, and online harassment.

In August, the three media outlets were hit with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, when internet traffic is deliberately directed at a website in order to knock it offline. The traffic used in the attacks came from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, unique numbers assigned to internet-connected devices. 

While it remains unknown who ordered the attacks, Qurium technical director Tord Lundström told CPJ that his group was able to map out how the services of U.K. and U.S. companies were used to try to take the media outlets down. Aliat Data leased thousands of IPs from IPXO; those IPs were then routed through servers at phoenixNAP’s datacenter in Ashburn, Virginia, in order to hit the sites. Qurium was able to defend against the attacks, so the media sites remained accessible.

The companies respond

Qurium has been in contact with all three companies to alert them to the DDoS attacks. Aliat Data, the company that operated the IPs when the incidents took place, said that it didn’t conduct the cyberattacks. An email from Gustavo Colombini, who works on infrastructure at Aliat Data, said that the company doesn’t “perform these types of attacks.” Colombini blamed the attacks on “security issues that could lead to these IPs being abused by external actors,” and said Aliat Data was fixing the issues.

“[W]e were basically serving hand-picked customers,” Colombini wrote to Qurium. The attackers could not be identified, Colombini said, because Aliat Data “never had in place a good monitoring mechanism.” Colombini also said: “No customer of ours was likely launching any type of attack.”

In response to CPJ’s email requesting an interview, Colombini repeated that Aliat Data did not conduct the attacks. “[A] key piece of our infrastructure was abused by external forces and the issue was solved as soon as we diagnosed it. We are working to improve our security mechanisms and it includes better monitoring,” Colombini wrote.

IPXO, the company that leased the IPs to Aliat Data, said that its client provides services for “web-scraping,” a common research method. After Qurium alerted the company to the attacks, it “suspended” the client – which it did not name – while an “incident investigation” was ongoing. The company provided no further details of the suspension. 

phoenixNAP, whose servers were used to direct the traffic in the attack, told Qurium that the “client responsible” had informed the company that “all of this has been caused by misconfiguration from one of his [the client’s] customers.” phoenixNAP also didn’t name the client, saying “[u]nless it is requested by law enforcement, we can not disclose any information about our clients as it would be considered as a breach of contract…” It also said “we do not tolerate network abuse.”

As of mid-September, online databases showed Aliat Data still operated the IPs from phoenixNAP’s servers.

CPJ emailed IPXO and phoenixNAP requesting interviews, but neither responded.

The companies’ identities  

Both IPXO and phoenixNAP offer a variety of products and services on their websites. IPXO, based in London, bills itself as “The World’s First IP Marketplace” and sells access to IP addresses, including short term leases. Arizona-based phoenixNAP has 15 data centers around the world, and in 2012 acquired another computing company called Secured Servers. It sells information technology and computing services, including internet traffic routing.

Aliat Data’s website, on the other hand, offers little information about its business, but advertises “proxy” and “data scraping” services, which may be used to facilitate less clearly traceable internet traffic and conduct bulk information collection online. Its site lists a Las Vegas address for Aliat LLC, but Wyoming state records show a company named Aliat LLC registered through the firm Registered Agents Inc. 

A customer service representative at Registered Agents Inc. told CPJ by phone that it is the registered agent for thousands of companies and could not provide any “significant insights into [Aliat LLC’s] leadership.” The representative said Registered Agents Inc. receives and passes along state mail and lawsuits to its companies, and could share no information about those companies without permission.

Reporting last year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Washington Post detailed how business entities with little oversight may be used by alleged criminals to avoid scrutiny. They named Registered Agents Inc. in their coverage of the issues. The Registered Agents Inc. representative was not aware of previous reporting about the company.

Defense against the attacks 

Analysis of the IPs used to target the sites revealed a pattern that made defending against them more difficult. Qurium found that IPs used in the attacks had been routed through various locations over the years and months prior, initially obscuring the fact that it came from phoenixNAP’s Ashburn, Virginia, data center. This made it harder for Qurium to guard the websites from the malicious traffic, Lundström said. 

“You have no patterns, you just have noise everywhere. You see different countries, you don’t know if these are real [news] readers,” he said. 

The IPs leased by Aliat Data and involved in the attacks have not hit the three sites since late August, Lundström told CPJ. But questions of accountability – and the identities of those behind these attacks on independent media sites – remain. “That’s the power of DDoS,” he said. “It never comes with a signature.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jonathan Rozen.

On the evening of August 12, Radio Baraawe director Osman Aweys Bahar heard gunshots outside the broadcaster’s offices in Barawe, the capital of Somalia’s South-West State. Osman and two other witnesses, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to safety concerns, said they climbed onto the building’s roof and saw about four men firing guns on the street below. Osman and one of the witnesses said the men were firing at the Radio Baraawe building and when they shouted down to ask why, one gunman discharged his weapon towards the rooftop, forcing them to run inside. 

Osman said no one was injured, but he shared images with CPJ of bullet holes in the building, which he said were a result of the shooting.

Radio Baraawe, which broadcasts in the minority Barawani language, has remained off air since the incident. Osman told CPJ that his colleagues were afraid to go back to work and he had gone into hiding as security sector contacts warned him that he might be arrested.  The station is still publishing content on its Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Since leaving the city, Osman told CPJ that he had received several threatening calls from unknown people who warned him that they knew where he was hiding. He also shared with CPJ a screenshot of a threat sent on August 25 via Facebook direct message.

“No journalists should have to work with fear that they could be shot at their desks. This incident has effectively silenced a station that was a crucial source of news and information for a minority community,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities in South-West State should independently investigate this incident, credibly establish the facts, and ensure accountability for those who carried out the shooting. They should provide safety guarantees so that Radio Baraawe’s staff can resume work.”

Osman said that he recognized some of the men as working for Liban Abukar Osman, the then-Barawe district commissioner,  whose office was opposite the Radio Baraawe building. Liban has since been dismissed from his post in an unrelated move.

Osman said he believed the attack was connected to Radio Baraawe’s August 8 broadcast about the death of a Barawe resident, whose family said he had been killed over a land dispute. The report was later posted on the outlet’s Facebook page. In a February interview with Radio Baraawe, the victim said that Liban had ignored his requests for help.

Liban told CPJ via messaging app that his security officers fired at a car that had crossed a checkpoint without authorization. He dismissed reports that the men were targeting Radio Baraawe as “propaganda” and said that his men only shot at the Radio Baraawe building in response to fire coming at them from the rooftop.

For their part, Osman and the two witnesses told CPJ that no one fired shots from Radio Baraawe’s roof that evening. However, Osman and one witness said they heard gunfire from a nearby police station behind the Radio Baraawe building around the same time.

Radio Baraawe has faced previous difficulties and Osman said he believed the station was targeted in part because it broadcasts in a minority language.

In April 2020, a local official said that he had banned Radio Baraawe from broadcasting in Barawani because it was a dialect and not a national language, according to a statement published by the Federation of Somali Journalists at the time. The ban was revoked a few days later, according to an SJS statement.

In January 2021, armed police raided the station, forced it off-air for two weeks and detained Osman for 10 days, according to the journalist and an SJS statement.

In June 2022, unidentified security personnel and some uniformed police officers raided Radio Baraawe, assaulted Osman, injuring one of his hands, and arrested him and another journalist, according to SOMA and SJS, as well as Osman, in an account published on Radio Baraawe’s Facebook account at the time.

CPJ’s requests for comment to the South-West State presidency via email and Facebook and to South-West State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed via X, formerly Twitter, did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“It was a very traumatic week. Sleepless. Very stressful. We could not publish our statement, the first statement of Mohamed’s detention,” SJS secretary general Abdalle Ahmed Mumin told CPJ in an interview from the U.K., where he fled earlier this year after he was repeatedly arrested by Somali authorities. “Imagine someone attacking your team, detaining one of your team, and you’re not able to communicate to the international world because your website has been taken down.” 

SJS found some relief when it connected with Qurium, a Sweden-based nonprofit that began hosting SJS’s website. But a week after the initial attack, another DDoS flood hit the website. This time, Qurium was able to protect SJS from going offline. Qurium’s analysis of these additional attacks also found that a U.S. company, RayoByte, had provided the tools used in the attack.

Sprious, which owns RayoByte, told Qurium in an email, which CPJ reviewed, that it had “removed the abusive user” from its network and added the SJS site to its “blacklist” to prevent it from being targeted further. 

SJS isn’t the only news outlet that has suffered a DDoS attack using RayoByte’s services. News outlets from at least five other countries — Kosovo, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, and Turkmenistan — have faced similar attacks over the last two years, according to Qurium’s analysis. These incidents provide a rare look at the mechanics of online censorship efforts and how private corporations can profit from them. 

Sprious declined CPJ’s requests for an interview and did not directly answer a list of written questions. But in emailed statements to CPJ, Sprious said it was “deeply concerned” about reports that its services were “allegedly” used in DDoS attacks. “We firmly stand against any form of online harassment or harm, including cyber-attacks, especially when it concerns entities that play a crucial role in promoting press freedom and the safety of journalists,” it said. 

Headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, RayoByte, formerly known as Blazing SEO, is one of many companies that sells clients access to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, unique numbers assigned to internet-connected devices, for “scraping,” a method for extracting large amounts of data from websites. RayoByte’s website lists a range of prices for access to IP addresses based on variables including type and speed.

One way to conduct scraping is through repeated requests to visit a site with different IP addresses. Journalists and researchers use scraping as a research technique, but when IP requests are directed quickly and en masse toward a specific site in order to overwhelm it and knock it offline, this constitutes a DDoS attack. 

CPJ has documented DDoS attacks against outlets conducting critical journalism around the world. These cyberattacks also often take place alongside other threats to journalists’ safety and press freedom. 

Qurium’s analysis shows that it blocked nearly 20,000 IP addresses from hitting the SJS website with millions of requests on August 18 and 19. The largest portion of the traffic (nearly 50%) came via RayoByte and its hosting partners, the analysis said. The second half of the traffic came through several other online channels, including virtual private networks (VPNs).

“We were very effective at mitigating the attack because within a few hours we realized we had seen this type of traffic before,” Qurium’s Lundström told CPJ. “We have met this [attacking] infrastructure in the past…this infrastructure is no joke.”

Similar DDoS attacks began almost immediately after Kosovo-based news site Nacionale began publishing in March 2022, covering local politics and social issues, co-founder Visar Arifaj told CPJ in a recent phone interview. “Our website would be down quite often. Because we were still fresh in the news market, it really had an impact for us to reach our audiences,” Arifaj said. “For us to be down a couple of hours during the day was a huge blow.” 

Qurium began hosting and defending Nacionale in September 2022, and in March and April 2023 Qurium notified Sprious that attackers had been using its services against the outlet. 

In emails from March, Qurium informed Sprious of attacks lasting “several hours non-stop.” One of the attacks “sourced” millions of web requests from IP addresses “publicly advertised by Rayobyte/BlazingSEO,” Qurium said. Sprious responded that it had “blacklisted” access to Nacionale’s website and it had barred the “user” responsible – which Sprious did not name — from accessing its services, but in April Qurium again tracked a DDoS attack against Nacionale involving RayoByte. In response to Qurium’s email about the April attack, Sprious said it had “discovered an issue” with its “security controls,” and had addressed it “to prevent further traffic.”

However, RayoByte-sourced internet traffic to Nacionale’s website did not stop and featured in DDoS attacks against the outlet in July and August, Lundström told CPJ. While Kosovo police arrested and prosecuted one man in connection with the cyberattacks and Qurium has successfully prevented the continued attacks from taking Nacionale offline, Lundström told CPJ that incoming traffic shows attackers continuing to harness IPs from a combination of proxy services, VPNs, and other sources. 

Alongside the cyberattacks, Nacionale’s staff have been subjected to “constant” online harassment for their work and were recently physically attacked on the job, though those attackers have been arrested, Arifaj told CPJ. “This constant pressure, even when it doesn’t get to the journalists physically and in a direct manner, you can see that it does a lot for their burnout,” he added. “It does take a toll, mentally, on everyone.”

Since 2022, Qurium has additionally tracked DDoS attacks with IPs sourced from RayoByte against four other outlets: Peoples Gazette from Nigeria, Kloop from Kyrgyzstan, Bulatlat from the Philippines, and Turkmen.news, which reports on Turkmenistan from exile. The attacks on three of the four outlets, excluding Kloop, also involved traffic via VPNs.

In its statements to CPJ, Sprious said it investigates reports of DDoS attacks using its services and takes “appropriate actions with the end user that we believe is responsible” and “steps to mitigate the reported issues, including, but not limited to, blacklisting associated domains and working diligently to remove abusive users.” The statements did not respond directly to CPJ’s requests for details of the customers responsible for these attacks and how the company responded in each case. 

Lundström told CPJ that Sprious has yet to respond to Qurium’s emails concerning the attacks on Peoples Gazette, Kloop, Bulatlat, and Turkmen.news, as well as the additional attacks on Nacionale in July and August. 

Proxies and VPNs have valid and important uses for ensuring internet users, including journalists, can maintain privacy online. Rights organizations, including CPJ, recommend the use of VPNs to defend against surveillance; individuals can use it to avoid state-backed online censorship, and companies use them to safeguard proprietary information. But Lundström described the use of proxy and VPN services to conduct DDoS attacks as a “weaponization” of these tools. “You’re hiding in a tool [made] for another purpose,” he said of the attackers. “I think it’s a strategic decision.”

“DDoS attacks are illegal under a section of the [U.S.] Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,” Gabe Rottman, director of the Technology and Press Freedom Project at the U.S.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides legal support to journalists, told CPJ. But he said that it is not necessarily illegal for proxy or VPN companies’ to provide services that are then used in DDoS attacks.

That doesn’t mean service providers can’t take actions. “You can have technology providers doing appropriate things to protect their users and others at the same time as they build their service in a way that protects privacy,” Rottman said. “If … you become aware of bad actors doing bad things, notify the authorities, stop them from using your service, mitigate the damage.” 

Attacks on the SJS website have continued, Lundström told CPJ, though none of the IPs have come via RayoByte since Qurium and CPJ contacted Sprious for comment. Nevertheless, Lundström wants RayoByte’s leadership to do more to address the fact that attackers have repeatedly come to the company’s services to target media sites. “[RayoByte’s] making all the money,” he said. “And we have to do all this extra work and build new infrastructure to deal with all this shit.” 

As for SJS, Abdalle remains worried about his colleague, who is still behind bars. But he says he’s confident that the press freedom group’s website will remain accessible. He still doesn’t know the identity of the person or people who launched the cyberattack, but he imagines what they might be thinking: “Now they are witnessing, they are coming into a new reality that even after the attack SJS is still resilient. SJS is still active. SJS is still available and is able to work and operate effectively both online and physically inside Somalia.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jonathan Rozen.

“Somali officials are demonstrating a disgraceful willingness to abuse legal processes to silence an outspoken reporter and press freedom advocate,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Abdalle Ahmed Mumin should be released without delay, those officials responsible for his ongoing persecution should be held individually accountable, and Somalia’s international partners should denounce this arrest as an act of aggression against press freedom.”

Officers arrested Abdalle during a public meeting convened by a senatorial committee, during which Abdalle was invited to speak, and did not show a warrant or explain why they were arresting him, according to media reports and Mohamed Ibrahim, president of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), a local media rights group that Abdalle cofounded and works at as secretary general. Abdalle was transferred to the central prison in Mogadishu.

On February 13, Abdalle was sentenced to two months in prison following a conviction of disobeying government orders, but he has been living in a state of legal limbo after prison officials refused to take him into custody, citing an interpretation of the law that would mean he had already served the prison time, according to a copy of the judgment reviewed by CPJ, a report by the U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America, and an SJS statement.

This is the latest chapter in four months of judicial harassment experienced by Abdalle since October 2022, after he voiced concern over a government directive on coverage of extremism that has the potential to censor the work of journalists.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Somali officials are demonstrating a disgraceful willingness to abuse legal processes to silence an outspoken reporter and press freedom advocate,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Abdalle Ahmed Mumin should be released without delay, those officials responsible for his ongoing persecution should be held individually accountable, and Somalia’s international partners should denounce this arrest as an act of aggression against press freedom.”

Officers arrested Abdalle during a public meeting convened by a senatorial committee, during which Abdalle was invited to speak, and did not show a warrant or explain why they were arresting him, according to media reports and Mohamed Ibrahim, president of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), a local media rights group that Abdalle cofounded and works at as secretary general. Abdalle was transferred to the central prison in Mogadishu.

On February 13, Abdalle was sentenced to two months in prison following a conviction of disobeying government orders, but he has been living in a state of legal limbo after prison officials refused to take him into custody, citing an interpretation of the law that would mean he had already served the prison time, according to a copy of the judgment reviewed by CPJ, a report by the U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America, and an SJS statement.

This is the latest chapter in four months of judicial harassment experienced by Abdalle since October 2022, after he voiced concern over a government directive on coverage of extremism that has the potential to censor the work of journalists.

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At least 120 people were killed in two car bomb explosions outside the education ministry offices, near the busy Zobe junction in Mogadishu, according to multiple media reports. The Al-Shabaab, a militant group linked to Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports.

Mohamed—also known as Koonaa—a reporter and producer with the privately owned M24 Somali TV online broadcaster, died at the scene of the explosions after suffering severe head injuries, according to M24 Somali TV’s chief executive officer and founder Abdiwali Abdullahi Hussein, also known as Keytoon, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, as well as separate statements by the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ), two local press rights groups.

Reuters photographer Feisal Omar and Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulle, director of M24 Somali TV and a contributor to the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), also were injured at the scene of the blasts, according to a VOA report and Reuters statement emailed to CPJ. All three journalists had rushed to the scene to report on the first blast when the second bomb exploded, the SJS statement, Abdiwali, and a Reuters spokesperson said. In addition, Bile Abdisalan, a security guard at the Reuters bureau, suffered minor injuries to his leg in the explosions, the Reuters spokesperson said in the statement.

“Mohamed Isse Hassan joins a long list of Somali journalists who have lost their lives in Al-Shabaab attacks, in a country considered one of the most hostile environments for the press. Unfortunately, these attacks are often characterized by a lack of accountability for the culprits,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Mohamed and the other journalists and media workers injured in the attack on October 29 deserve justice. Authorities should ensure they receive it.”

Mohamed and Abdulkadir were at the M24 Somali TV offices near the Zobe junction when the first bomb exploded around 2 p.m., Abdiwali and a VOA report said. Both rushed to the scene to cover the first blast and were hit when the second explosion went off minutes later, as ambulances and other first responders arrived, Abdiwali and other media reports said. The Reuters spokesperson said that Feisal was taking photographs “when the secondary blast took place.”

Abdulkadir lost two fingers and had shrapnel wounds in his abdomen, the VOA report said. Abdiwali said that Abdulkadir was discharged from the hospital by October 31. The Reuters spokesperson said that Feisal was “fine and recovering at home” but still needed minor surgery to remove “some debris or shrapnel” that hit him in the torso.

Mohamed, who is survived by his wife and a six-month-old son, previously worked with various media outlets in Mogadishu, including privately owned Universal Somali TV, where he was a reporter until a few months ago, according to Abdiwali and Universal Somali TV East Africa director Abdullahi Hersi Kulmiye, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Abdullahi said that Mohamed had also worked with the privately owned Somali outlets Radio Simba, Goobjoog Media Group, and Shabelle Media Network. Mohamed also published his reporting on his Facebook page using the brand Koonaa Media, according to CPJ’s review of that page.

Mohamed is the second journalist to be killed in connection to his work in Somalia this year. On September 30, state-media camera operator Ahmed Mohamed Shukur was killed in a bomb attack by Al-Shabaab. Five years ago, on October 14, 2017, journalist Ali Nur Siad was among at least 500 people killed after a truck bomb detonated at the Zobe junction. That attack was attributed to Al-Shabaab, though the group did not claim responsibility, media reports said.

In a telephone call on Tuesday evening, Somali police spokesperson Sadiq Dodishe asked CPJ to send queries via messaging app but had yet to respond to those questions by publication time. 

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“Abdalle Ahmed Mumin is a fearless and tireless advocate for the rights of Somali journalists to report the news freely and independently. His arrest is an unacceptable aggression and is undoubtedly sending a ripple of fear through the Somali media community,” said CPJ sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should release Abdalle Ahmed Mumin immediately and unconditionally, and should instead work to create a climate in which Somali journalists can work without fear.”   

About 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 11, intelligence personnel at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport arrested Abdalle, cofounder and secretary general of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), according to the syndicate’s president and cofounder, Mohamed Ibrahim Isak, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and Twitter posts from Somali media outlets. Abdalle, who was traveling to Nairobi at the time of arrest, has since been transferred to a detention facility managed by Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency, Mohamed said.

In a tweet published shortly before his arrest, Abdalle reported that intelligence officials had on Monday evening attempted to force entry into the syndicate’s office in Mogadishu, and harassed other tenants in the building. Mohamed said that he believed this raid and Abdalle’s arrest were connected to a Monday press conference, held at the syndicate’s Mogadishu office, in which a group of five local press rights groups condemned a recent government directive broadly banning intentional and unintentional “dissemination of extremism ideology” in the media and by the public.

Somalia’s deputy information minister Abdirahman Yusuf Omar, who also goes by Adala, told CPJ via messaging app that Abdalle’s arrest did not have to do with journalism or the journalist’s opinions. In response to a request to clarify why Abdalle had been arrested, he said he would share information once “security agencies finalize (the) issue.” Abdirahman said the ministry’s directive on extremism ideology was targeted at propaganda by the militant group Al-Shabaab and that the government “will not harm any freedom for its people.”

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“Ahmed Mohamed Shukur joins a long list of Somali journalists who have lost their lives while reporting the news, but his case must not become the latest example of a lack of accountability for attacks on the Somali press,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Somalia’s security and judicial organs must do everything possible to ensure a credible investigation into Ahmed Mohamed Shukur’s killing and to deliver justice through a transparent and fair process.”

Ahmed, 26, a camera operator with state-owned Somali National TV (SNTV), was killed in a bomb attack while covering a security operation against Somali militant group al-Shabab in the town of Basra, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the capital Mogadishu, according to SNTV social media posts and a statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate, a local press rights group. Several other people were killed in the attack, including Mogadishu police chief Farhan Mohamud Adan and other security officials, according to those sources and a report by U.S Congress-funded Voice of America.

SJS reported that an improvised explosive device killed Ahmed and the security officials and that the journalist was embedded with the security forces; the Voice of America report said it was a landmine, targeting Farhan. CPJ was unable to verify the type of device used. 

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the media. At least 71 one other journalists have been killed in connection to their work since 1992, according to CPJ research.

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“Mohamed Abdi Ilig and Abdijabar Mohamed Hussein should never have been arrested for simply covering a breaking news story in real time, and we are deeply disappointed by the convictions and harsh sentences handed down to them,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Appealing these spurious convictions through Somaliland’s flawed justice system would be unjust, lengthy, and uncertain. Time is of the essence for these two innocent journalists, one of whom is seriously ill. Authorities must not further undermine Somaliland’s already precarious press freedom environment and should ensure the release of the journalists immediately, without condition.”

Mohamed, a reporter and chairperson of MM Somali TV, Abdirahman Ali Khalif, a reporter for Gobonimo TV, and Abdijabar, a reporter for Horn Cable TV, were among 18 journalists arrested on April 13 in connection to their coverage of a fight between inmates and guards at the Hargeisa Central Prison in the region’s capital, as CPJ documented at the time. The majority of the journalists were eventually released, according to a statement by the Mogadishu-based press rights organization, the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS). Mohamed is seriously ill and his condition worsened while in jail, according to Yasmin Omar Mohamoud, chair of the local advocacy group Human Rights Centre Somaliland, CPJ was not able to obtain details of his medical condition.

Mohamed, Abdijabar, and Abdirahman were charged under Articles 215 and 328 of the penal code relating to “subversive or anti-national propaganda” or publishing false news, according to Human Rights Centre Somaliland and a joint statement by SJS and the Somali Media Association (SOMA). The pair were sentenced in a “hasty” hearing that took place “without the knowledge of the defense lawyers and family members of the defendants,” according to the joint SJS and SOMA statement. The court acquitted Abdirahman.

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On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 13, security personnel — including police and intelligence officers — arrested a group of at least nine journalists, working for seven local private media outlets and two international outlets, who were covering a fight between inmates and guards at a prison in the region’s capital, Hargeisa, according to multiple media reports and statements by press rights groups. Two of the detained journalists were released after a few hours in custody, according to the press rights groups and a statement by the Human Rights Center, an advocacy group.

Later that day, security personnel raided the Horn Cable TV offices, which was one of the stations that aired breaking news dispatches from the scene of the prison fight, and arrested another six journalists, according to statements made at a news conference by Sakaria Muhumed Ahmed, the chairperson of the Somaliland Journalists Association, a local media industry body; a joint statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Somali Media Association, Mogadishu-based press rights organizations; and Abdikarim Saed Salah, a Horn Cable TV journalist who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Abdikarim said that the men who raided the station were police officers.

The detained journalists’ colleagues said that none of them had been produced in court. CPJ was unable to independently verify the whereabouts of the 13 journalists who remain behind bars or what allegations police have leveled against them.

“These sweeping arrests expose the intolerance for independent reporting that has made Somaliland a hostile environment for members of the press,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan African representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities must release all journalists detained for their work, allow them to go back to their jobs without interference, and ensure that security personnel no longer harass or detain journalists for doing their jobs.”

At a news conference, shared online by state media, Justice Minister Saleban Warsame Guled accused journalists of rushing to the scene to “report unconfirmed news.” At that same press conference, Ahmed Awale Yusuf, the head of Somaliland’s Custodial Corps, which is in charge of guarding the prison, vowed to file a case against “those who exaggerated the incident” for “damaging the moral of the soldiers and lying.”  

According to media reports, including by some the journalists’ employers; the statements; and the colleagues who spoke to CPJ, the nine journalists detained near the prison were:

• Naima Abdi Ahmed, founder of Carro Edeg Media
• Hassan Galaydh, a BBC correspondent
• Sagal Mustafe Hassan, a stringer for U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America (VOA)
• Mohamed Abdi Ilig, a reporter and chairperson of MM Somali TV
• Mohamed Jamal Jirde, a cameraperson with MM Somali TV
• Aidarus Mohamed, a reporter and regional bureau chief with the Mogadishu-headquartered Goobjoog Media Group
• Ahmed Nur Samrawi, a Bulsho TV reporter
• Ahmed Said Hassan Shimali, a Horn Cable TV reporter
• Ahmed Mohamud Yusuf, a Saab TV camera operator

Police and intelligence officers at the scene also tried to arrest another journalist, CBA TV reporter and manager Hamza Hirsi Hayd, but he was allowed to go free after the officers argued and failed to agree about whether he should be taken into custody, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and another person familiar with his case who requested anonymity for safety concerns.

Sagal and Naima were released after about three to four hours in custody, according to the same sources, a VOA statement shared with CPJ via email, and Naima, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. VOA said that authorities did not provide a reason for Sagal’s arrest.

Naima told CPJ she was held at the intelligence headquarters, where officers searched her phone and accused her of undermining national security and recording “sensitive matters.” She said that the officers beat and kicked her, including hitting her in the face. She said she suffered aches all over her body and on one of her hands, that eight of her teeth in “fragile condition,” and that she visited a local dentist who gave her painkillers.

After raiding the Horn Cable TV offices, security personnel arrested reporters Abdijabar Mohamed Hussein, Mohamed Suldan Ahmed, and Khalid Mohamed Aleeli, as well as camera operators Ayanle Abdi Buni, Mustafa Muhumed Abdi, and Abdifatah Mohamud Ismail, according to Abdikarim. Sakaria, at the April 13 press conference, said that security personnel also confiscated two cameras.

During the April 13 press conference, Sakaria said five journalists were held at the Hargeisa Central Police station while the whereabouts of the rest were unclear. The SJS reported that seven of the journalists were held at the intelligence headquarters while the rest were held at the central police station in Hargeisa, a report corroborated by Abdikarim and Abdishakur Dayib Mohamed, director of MM Somali TV, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Bulsho TV director Ali Farah Hardi and Goobjoog Media’s deputy director Abdiaziz Ahmed Gurbiye told CPJ via messaging app that they were unsure where the journalists from their stations are detained.

CPJ’s calls and messages to Somaliland Police Commissioner General Mohamed Adan Saqadhi, Intelligence Chief Mohamed Salebaan Hasan, and Justice Minister Salebaan Warsame Guleed were not answered. CPJ could not immediately find contact information for the prison security head Ahmed Awale Yusuf. CPJ sent queries for comment via Facebook and Twitter to Somaliland’s ministries of justice, information, and foreign affairs but did not receive a response. A query sent via Twitter to the office of the Somaliland president was also unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On the evening of January 24, a group of police officers in the town of Beledweyne, a city in Somalia’s Hirshabelle state, harassed and beat Radio Hiiraan Weyne reporter Abdullahi Ali Abukar, accusing him of leaking footage of a January 21 police raid on the outlet, according to a Facebook statement published by the privately owned station and Abdullahi, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Separately, on the afternoon January 30, police officers in the town of Abudwak, in the Galmudug regional state, raided the privately owned Sooyal TV and Radio offices, taking equipment and arresting the station’s director, Mahad Bashiir Xilif, according to a joint statement by local press rights groups the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Somali Media Association (SOMA), and another statement by the Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ).

“Unless each arbitrary arrest or assault on a journalist is investigated credibly, impunity in attacks on the press will continue to fester within the ranks of Somalia’s security forces,” said CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should investigate the attacks on journalists in the Galmudug and Hirshabelle regions, hold those officers responsible, and ensure that equipment damaged or confiscated during the raid on Sooyal TV and Radio is replaced or returned.”

On January 24, Abdullahi was walking home from work when he was approached by a group of officers, and accused of leaking CCTV footage of a January 21 police raid on Radio Hiiraan Weyne. Abdullahi told CPJ that Beledweyne police commander Mohamed Mohamud Durdage was in charge of the officers.

During that raid, Abdullahi was arrested and detained for several hours, alongside six of his colleagues, following the station’s reporting of an opposition group, as CPJ reported at the time.

For about 35 minutes on January 24, the officers forced the journalist to carry heavy stones, left on the streets earlier that day by protestors, and beat him with the butts of their guns, resulting in back and chest pain, according to Abdullahi’s interview with CPJ and a separate interview published on Facebook by Hiiraan Weyne.   

In a telephone interview on February 9, Beledweyne police commander Mohamed requested questions via WhatsApp, but did not answer them. CPJ questions sent via messaging application to Hirshabelle Information Minister Mohamed Abdirahman and via Facebook to the Hirshabelle State House, the office of the regional president, were also unanswered.

During the January 30 raid on Sooyal TV and Radio, police broke a desktop computer and confiscated a hard disk and two memory cards, Mahad told CPJ by messaging app, adding that the memory cards have since been returned.

Mahad was arrested and told by police that it was in connection to a January 30 report, published shortly before the raid, about Galmudug police officers on strike, angered by delayed salaries and an alleged government plan to replace them with new recruits.

Police then drove Mahad to the outskirts of Abudwak town, where he was held, blindfolded under a tree, for several hours, the journalist told CPJ. Later that day, the officers moved Mahad to a police station in Abudwak, where he was detained overnight before he was freed unconditionally, following the intervention of his clan’s elders and family.

The officers who raided Sooyal Radio and Television were identified by Mahad and the statements from the local press rights groups as members of the Darwish forces, a police unit deployed at federal and state level, whose mandate includes border policing, protecting government infrastructure and fighting terrorism, according to reports. Darwish officers have been previously trained by or received support from several international actors, including the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a regional peacekeeping force, the United Nations Mission to Somalia (UNSOM), and the Italian government, according to the joint SJS and SOMA statement as well as reports and statements posted by these groups.

Previously, the European Union’s delegation in Somalia, its training mission in the country (EUTM), and its Capacity Building Mission in Somalia (EUCAP), have also supported the training of Darwish officers, according to these same sources.

Both UNSOM and the European Union delegation said they had not trained or supported local Darwish forces in Galmudug, according to emailed statements sent to CPJ. UNSOM said it is “engaged in efforts to strengthen capable, accountable and rights-based police” in the state and plans to fund future trainings of police officers in human rights.

The European Union said its past support of the Darwish was limited to “specific Federal Darwish units” deployed to another Somali region, the Southwest State. The EU said it would that, follow up on “any evidence or indications that EU-supported Darwish forces had been involved in press freedom violations in Galmudug.”

When CPJ called AMISOM for comment, Gifty Bingley, a spokesperson, said she could not immediately provide comment as the matter did not directly involve AMISOM officers. CPJ emails sent to AMISOM went unanswered.

Someone who answered the phone when CPJ called the Italian embassy to Somalia on February 10 acknowledged receipt of an emailed request for comment, but the questions remained unanswered as of publication time.

In a telephone conversation on February 9, Farah Abdille Hassan, a district commissioner in Abudwak, requested that CPJ send queries via WhatsApp, but did not immediately respond. Sharmarke Godad, the police commissioner in Galgaduud, in whose jurisdiction Abudwak falls, did not answer CPJ’s phone calls and did not respond to queries sent by text message. CPJ emails to the Galmudug State House and its internal security ministry were either unanswered or undelivered.

In a statement sent via messaging application, Galmudug Information Minister Ahmed Shire Falagle told CPJ that the incident had been reported to him by Sooyal. Ahmed said he “apologize[s] to the journalist who had to endure this inappropriate practice,” that the Galmudug government would “get to the bottom of this,” and that local police said they were investigating, “as they were not informed of the raid that took place.”

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, and CPJ has previously documented attacks on the press by security personnel — including arrests and assaults. In a statement on February 9, the United States’ State Department announced visa restrictions for officials who undermined the democratic process, including “unjust arrests or intimidation of journalists.” The SJS and SOMA welcomed the visa bans as a “move to uphold justice,” according to their joint statement.

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On Friday afternoon, January 21, 2022, heavily armed Hirshabelle police in the regional capital of Beledweyne raided local independent radio station Hiiraan Weyn while it was on air, according to the station’s editor-in-chief Yasiin Ali Ahmed, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, a joint statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and Somali Media Association (SOMA), and a statement by the Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ). During the raid, officers forced the station off the air and detained seven journalists for six hours, according to those sources. 

The raid followed the broadcasting of an interview with the Hiiraan People’s Liberation Front in Beledweyne, a group opposed to the current leadership in Hirshabelle, less than two hours earlier, according to the statement and Yasiin, who added that police used their weapons to break down a door to get into the station. 

“The outrageous detention of the seven Hiiraan Weyn journalists and the temporary shutdown of the radio station shows a complete disregard for the right of journalists to work freely and without fear in Somalia,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York. “Threatening journalists with death in a country that has a culture of impunity for the murder of journalists sends a chilling message. Those responsible, no matter how senior, must be held accountable and their behavior must not be condoned.”

With 25 murders in the past decade still unsolved, Somalia tops CPJ’s annual Global Impunity Index as the country with the world’s worst record for bringing killers of journalists to justice.

The seven detained journalists – Yasiin, Abdullahi Ali Abukar, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, Abdisamad Elmi Abdi, Abdimajid Dahir, and Mustaf Ali Addow – were taken to the Beledweyne Police Station, where they were held for six hours and told by police that they were “terrorists” who would be shot and killed for reporting on the Hiiraan People’s Liberation Front, according to the joint statement and Yasiin.

“We were detained without access to a lawyer or anyone,” Yasiin told CPJ. “We were told that if we were arrested again, we would be killed, but we will continue to do our work until we get justice or die.” 

The journalists were eventually freed without charge after widespread calls for their release by citizens and journalists’ groups. None of the journalists were hurt and no equipment was seized during the raid, Yasiin told CPJ. 

Later the same day, the journalists were taken to a house where Hirshabelle Deputy President Yusuf Ahmed Hagar, Hirshabelle Police Chief Colonel Hassan Dhi’isow, and Somali National Army Commander Colonel Mohamud Hassan Ibrahim were present, according to Yasiin and the SJS and SOMA statement.   

“They threatened us with consequences if we continued to report anything critical of the Hirshabelle authorities,” Yasiin said. “We were told we would be killed next time if we were arrested again.” 

The following day, on Saturday, January 22, 2022, Hiiraan Weyn returned on air. 

FESOJ secretary-general Farah Omar Nur expressed concern in a news report about the continued clampdown on press freedom in Beledweyne, despite the training of police officers by media groups designed to support freedom of expression, according to the SJS and SOMA statement.  

“SJS and SOMA are also concerned that police officers who committed these blatant violations and their commanders were trained and equipped with contribution funds provided by the British and German governments through a Joint Police Program with little or no accountability mechanism,” Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, SJS’s secretary general is quoted as saying in the joint statement, adding that protecting human rights includes protecting freedom of expression.

The British embassy in Mogadishu confirmed UK support for the Joint Police Program (JPP) in an emailed response to CPJ’s request for comment, saying that freedom of speech and a free press are crucial pieces of an inclusive political process.

“We have asked the JPP Secretariat to investigate these allegations,” Claire Blythe-Tinker, the second political secretary at the British Embassy told CPJ by email. “We await the outcome of this process and will also be in contact with the relevant authorities in Hirshabelle. However, as we have done in the past, we stand ready to suspend our support depending on the outcome of the investigation.”

The German Embassy said it is aware of the alleged incident at Hiiraan Weyn and is taking it very seriously, Judith Gosmann, the policy officer of the Somalia Unit told CPJ in an email, adding that, “Germany firmly reiterates its commitment to international human rights standards, particularly freedom of press and expression, and will deliver the (JPP) program in a manner that enhances these objectives and does not undermine them.”

Beledweyne Police Commissioner Mohamed Mohamud did not respond to several phone calls and messages sent by CPJ via WhatsApp. There was also no response to CPJ’s emails and phone messages to the offices of Yusuf and Mohamud.

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Abdiaziz, a well-known journalist also known as Abdiaziz Afrika who worked as director of the government-owned Radio Mogadishu, was killed by a suicide attack as he was leaving a restaurant. Sharmarke, a director of the government-owned Somali National TV, and their driver Abdukadir Abdullahi Nur, were injured in the attack, according to multiple media reports.

The militant group Al-Shabaab took responsibility for the attack and said they had been “hunting” Abdiaziz for a long time, according to those reports, although a November 21 report by the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), a local press rights group, said it “was not clear how the suicide bomber identified the journalists’ vehicle and got knowledge of their movement.” Questions about how the attackers knew Abdiaziz was behind the tinted windows of a car that wasn’t his own, heighten the need for a thorough investigation, SJS Secretary General Abdalle Ahmed Mumin told CPJ by phone. 

“Somalia is one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world and this tragic attack is just another example of that,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “A thorough and transparent investigation into the attack that killed Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled and injured Sharmarke Mohamed Warsame and Abdukadir Abdullahi Nur is critical for authorities to signal that they are serious about reversing the impunity that prevails in journalists’ killings in Somalia.”

Abdullahi Amin Mohamud, the editor of Somali National TV who is known by the name Abdullahi Qorshe, told CPJ he was about 20 meters – about 22 yards – away from the attack when he saw the blast, and then helped get Sharmarke and Abdukadir to hospital, where they remain. “Everyone was running in different directions, and it was terrifying,” he said. “It was a really sad situation, when you see your colleague and friend is dying in front of you.”

Journalists working for government-owned media are specifically targeted by Al-Shabaab, Abdullahi told CPJ, adding that “[Abdiaziz] Afrika was the biggest target” because of a program he hosted, where he interviewed imprisoned members of the militant group. Other than his position with the state media, Sharmarke was not working on anything that would have made him a more likely target for Al-Shabaab, Abdullahi said.

A statement by Somalia’s Information Minister Osman Abokar Dubbe, which was posted on Facebook by Radio Mogadishu on November 20, said Abdiaziz was “killed in an explosion” and “targeted” because he “gave everything for the state-building process.”

Abdiaziz was buried November 21, according to a tweet by the local Shabelle Media Network and Abdalle.

For the last seven years, Somalia has topped CPJ’s Impunity Index, which tracks countries’ records of holding journalists’ killers to account. Abdalle told CPJ he had “slim hope” that authorities would be able to reverse that trend on the killing of Abdiaziz.

CPJ reached Somali presidential spokesperson Abdirashid Mohamed Hashi by phone. He said he was in a meeting and would call back in ten minutes but did not. CPJ’s calls to Somalia police spokesperson Zakia Hussein and Abdirahman Yusuf Omar, Somalia’s deputy information minister, went unanswered.

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On the night of June 23,  four unidentified men attacked Hanad, chief editor of the privately owned broadcaster Goobjoog Television, according to a report by Goobjoog, a statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate, a local press rights group, and Hanad, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

The journalist, who also works for the syndicate, was near his home in Mogadishu’s Wadajir district when the men confronted him, threatened to kill him, and punched and kicked him all over his body, he said. Two of the attackers cut his left arm and the back of his neck with knives, and then the group fled when Hanad screamed in pain, Hanad told CPJ.

Hanad told CPJ that the attack had been reported to the police, but that no arrests had been made as of July 9.

“Somali authorities have a duty to promptly and credibly investigate the attack on journalist and press freedom advocate Hanad Ali Guled, determine if it was retaliation for his work, and ensure that those responsible are held to account,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Any lingering unanswered questions in this case will force Hanad and his colleagues to live in fear, and will only reinforce the message that Somali journalists can be attacked with impunity.”

Hanad was treated at the local Kalkal Hospital for wounds on his neck and arm, and was discharged the following morning, he said. He added that he returned to the hospital for five follow-up appointments as of July 7, and still had pain on his left arm.

Hanad and Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, secretary-general of the Somali Journalists Syndicate, both told CPJ via messaging app that they did not know the motive for the attack or the identities of the assailants.

Both said they feared the attack was reprisal for Hanad’s work with Goobjoog or the syndicate, where Hanad works as the training secretary, in charge of coordinating safety and labor rights workshops and trainings for journalists.

Goobjoog Television covers general regional, national, and international news, according to CPJ’s review of its website and YouTube channel. In the week before the attack, the station had covered recent elections in the breakaway region of Somaliland and upcoming federal elections, and Hanad occasionally conducts interviews and anchors the show’s news round-up program.

Hanad said that the attackers did not say anything other than the threats to kill him, and did not reference his work as a journalist. He added that he lost two cellphones in the attack, but was unsure if the men stole them or if he dropped them during the scuffle.

Abdalle told CPJ that he reported the attack on Hanad to police on June 24.

Previously, in February, Somali security forces harassed at least four Goobjoog journalists, and in 2020, authorities convicted the broadcaster’s deputy director, Abdiaziz Ahmed Gurbiye, on charges of publishing false news in reporting that was critical of the government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, as CPJ has documented.

Unidentified gunmen previously abducted Hanad in April 2017 and held him overnight until he escaped, in an attack that believed was retaliation for his work at Goobjoog, according to multiple media reports from the time and Hanad.

The Somali Journalists Syndicate, established in 2019, has frequently covered attacks on the press in Somalia, including by security personnel and the militant group Al-Shabaab, and has published critical statements on federal and regional authorities’ failure to tackle impunity in attacks on the press, according to CPJ’s review of statements posted on its website. Abdalle, in the syndicate’s statement following the attack on Hanad, wrote that there were “ongoing threats” to the syndicate’s staff.

Abdalle told CPJ that unidentified men have frequently sat in vehicles outside the syndicate’s office in Mogadishu for days at a time, and said he suspected the group was under surveillance by intelligence personnel. He said he had seen those men in November 2020, and March and May 2021.

Separately, on June 10, unidentified men who falsely claimed to be Abdalle’s relatives went to the syndicate’s office and asked for his whereabouts, he said, adding that he filed a police report on June 12 and an investigation was still underway.

Somalia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, and for six years the country has topped CPJ’s Impunity Index—a report that spotlights countries where those who murder journalists escape justice.

When asked about the attack on Hanad and the threats against the syndicate’s staff, Guled Sheikh Ahmed, the commander of Mogadishu’s Criminal Investigations Department, told CPJ via messaging app on July 9 that those affected should explain the attack to him so police could “investigate his case to find what transpired.”

When CPJ asked today whether Guled’s response was in reference to Hanad or the syndicate, or both, he did not respond.

On July 8 and July 9, CPJ contacted Farhan Mohamud Adan, the Banadir regional police commander whose jurisdiction includes Mogadishu, via messaging app, but he did not respond. CPJ repeatedly called Zakia Hussein, Somali’s deputy police commissioner and messaged her via Twitter, but she did not respond.

Somali police commissioner Abdi Hassan Mohamed Hijar also did not answer a message from CPJ sent via Twitter; an email sent to the police force returned an error message saying that it could not be delivered.

CPJ also emailed Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency for comment on the surveillance allegations, but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.