Mohammed Omer Mulla

A U.S. citizen has been charged with kidnapping and other counts for his alleged role in the abduction of a freelance journalist who was held hostage in Somalia for nearly three years. According to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in federal court in New York, Abdi Yusuf Hassan and others conspired to kidnap the journalist in January 2012 in Galkayo, Somalia. The journalist was held until September 2014. The complaint says that during the journalist's time in captivity, Hassan directed the journalist to call a family member and to make a video demanding $20 million in ransom. Hassan was born in Mogadishu and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was arrested in Minneapolis on Friday and will be returned to New York to face charges. Source: star TRIBUNE.

The Kenyan government has warned that it will not cede an inch of its soil in the disputed maritime border with Somalia even as it affirmed that it is committed to a peaceful resolution of the row. At a Cabinet meeting at in Nairobi Thursday, chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta, the government made the decision that was communicated by Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Dr Monica Juma in a press briefing. The Cabinet also discussed and agreed on a roadmap for resolving the maritime border dispute with Somalia and measures for safeguarding Kenya’s territorial integrity, marine resources including offshore oil and gas exploration acreage in the Indian Ocean. Addressing the media at a city hotel after a closed-door session with members of the Defence and Foreign Relations committee of the National Assembly Thursday afternoon over the dispute, Dr Juma said the response given by Somalia does not meet Kenya’s expectations. “We sent a protest to Somalia on February 9, when we got

A Somali deputy Attorney-General was shot dead by two armed men while driving a car in the capital Mogadishu, officials said late Wednesday. Mr Hassan Gelle, a police officer, said two men armed with pistols shot Mohamed Mursal, a deputy AG in Sigale village in Mogadishu's Hodan District. "The armed men ordered [him] to get off his car and shot him dead. They sped off with the car, [which] police later found abandoned on the roadside," Mr Gelle said. Eyewitnesses reported the incident saying they heard gun shots at the scene of the murder. "Two armed men riding in a three-wheeled motorcycle stopped the car of the deputy Attorney-General and then opened fire on him and he died on the spot," Hawa Hussein, a local resident told  Xinhua . On September 27, 2017, armed men shot Mr Mursal's mother, Anab Hashi, who was the general secretary of National Women Organization, at the junction of Hamar Weyne District of Mogadishu. Al-Qaeda affiliated al