admin“Deciding to stay here is so discouraging,” Hashi, (23), said on Saturday while sitting in a small room at the Shabelle radio station, where Abdi was a reporter. “We can’t even pay respects to our fallen colleague since al-Shabab is threatening us.”
Abdi’s death was the second targeted killing of a Somali journalist in less than two months. The attacks have sent waves of trepidation through Mogadishu’s media community.
“We sleep at the radio station because we can’t go home,” Muhyadin Hassan, the station’s editor, said yesterday. After he decided to go home on Sunday, he said his wife called and told him two men seemed to be hanging out on the street close to their home. We don’t know why we are being targeted. You can’t know who is going to kill you,” Hassan said.
Shabelle is one of Mogadishu’s most popular stations. It frequently reports on government corruption, abuses by al-Shabab militants against civilians, extortion by government troops — all topics that can earn the reporters enemies.
The militant group al-Shabab appeared to claim responsibility for Abdi’s death, saying on its website that the killing would serve as a “lesson” to other journalists. Al-Shabab — which runs its own radio station — said Shabelle was an anti-Islamic station. — AP.
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