Somalia will set up a new coastguard force to combat piracy as well as to strengthen its control over its territorial waters and natural resources, the presidency said Wednesday. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
United Nations investigators hoped they would get some help from Facebook when they asked to see information on suspected pirates operating in Somalia. But Facebook refused. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
United Nations investigators hoped they would get some help from Facebook when they asked to see information on suspected pirates operating in Somalia. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
At least one person was killed and several others were wounded Wednesday when a car bomb exploded in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, the latest in a string of attacks, police said. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
UN sanctions experts have complained to the UN Security Council that Facebook refuses to answer questions about ship hijackings suspected to be organized on social media sites. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Two Spanish aid workers kidnapped by Somali militants from a Kenyan refugee camp in 2011 were on their way home Friday but the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) organization they worked for declined to say whether a ransom had been paid.
“We are very concerned and cognizant for security risks ongoing for MSF staff inside Somalia and also that there are ongoing abductions still to be resolved. We feel it would be inappropriate and insecure of us to provide details relating to captivity or to the ransom,” MSF program manager Will Robertson said in Nairobi, Kenya.
“What I will say is that we’ve had a lot of support from many stakeholders within Somalia and we are very grateful for their assistance,” he added.
The release of Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut was announced by MSF on Thursday. The two were kidnapped in October 2011 when Somali militants entered the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya in October 2011 and took them hostage after shooting and wounding their Kenyan driver.
The attack was the third kidnapping of Europeans in Kenya in six weeks and a reason Kenya gave for sending troops into Somalia days later.
Speaking in Madrid, MSF president in Spain Jose Antonio Bastos said the two women were healthy and eager to see relatives when the Spanish military plane carrying them lands at a military airport near Madrid on Friday afternoon. The MSF asked the media and the public to respect the privacy of the women and their families.
The plane picked up the two in Djibouti but Bastos did not say how they got there or how the release was arranged. In Nairobi, Robertson said he had “no major information” on where the women were held in Somalia or by whom.
He said the 2011 abductions, which occurred even as Somalia was suffering from a famine that killed more than 250,000 people, had a detrimental impact on MSF’s ability to respond to famine needs.
____
Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya and Alan Clendenning and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
From the air, lines of trailers and tents stretch across the Jordanian desert. Welcome to Camp Zaatari, home to thousands of Syrian refugees and fast turning into a small city.
The camp was opened just a year ago as Jordan faced the nightmarish task of caring for and sheltering an exodus of people from Syria, traumatised by long months of war, and fleeing for their lives.
Now it houses around 115,000 dispossessed, who are resiliently determined to get back on their feet, even as the sound of artillery fire from just across the border echoes around the camp at night.
Tents are mostly being replaced by container homes made of plastic and aluminium. Each costs about $2,500 and the camp holds 16,500 of them, with hopes that soon there will be 30,000.
“Home sweet home,” camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt of the UN refugee agency told US Secretary of State John Kerry during a visit on Thursday with no hint of irony.
He highlighted the stark fact that, with no end to the 28-month-old conflict in sight, camp residents are increasingly resigning themselves to a protracted stay and are trying to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives.
Many come from the border province of Daraa, cradle of the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule that escalated into armed rebellion,
“People of Daraa are traders. They have it in their blood,” said Kleinschmidt, an aid worker who is a veteran of world hotspots from Bosnia to Rwanda to Somalia.
“It’s incredible what they will trade, they’ll trade anything,” he told journalists.
Front courtyards are being cemented to keep out the mud, some families are even putting up little fountains outside their doors — “a symbol of home,” said Kleinschmidt.
The ever resourceful refugees are even tapping into the camp’s electricity network, leaving Kleinschmidt with a monthly bill approaching $500,000.
Most of the stolen power goes to run some 3,000 shops and 580 restaurants and food stalls which now dot the few asphalted roads — earning them the nickname the “Champs Elysee”, after Paris’s most famous street.
Here refugees can sip tea, buy shoes, or haggle for an air conditioning unit for their home, many of which now bristle with satellite dishes. And 10 taxis charge high prices to ferry people around.
Some of the money is carried out with the refugees. More comes from remittances from relatives working in Gulf or the West.
Others, including the children, scavenge for work. Smuggling is a problem, and every possession is for sale. Even the container homes are rented out or sold or used in schemes not sanctioned by the UN refugee agency.
There are three hospitals, a couple of schools, a main food distribution point and others just for bread, handing out some 5,000 loaves a day. There are also five football pitches and playgrounds with slides and swings.
“It’s important to keep some 60,000 children busy,” said Kleinschmidt, lamenting however that out of 30,000 of school age, just 5,000 have resumed their lessons.
Twelve to 15 babies are born into this no-man’s land every day, and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The aid group Doctors Without Borders says that two of its workers kidnapped by Somali militants from a Kenyan refugee camp in October 2011 have been released.
Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that the two Spanish women — Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut — are both safe and healthy and are eager to join loved ones.
The group thanked those involved with securing the women’s release but did not specify who that was.
Somali militants entered the world’s largest refugee camp — Dadaab, in eastern Kenya — in October 2011 and took the two women after shooting and wounding their Kenyan driver. The attack was the third kidnapping of Europeans in Kenya in six weeks and was one of the reasons Kenya gave for sending troops into Somalia days later.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A military spokesman in Somalia says that government forces will help to replace Ethiopian troops who vacated a Somali town in recent days.
The pull-out by Ethiopian troops from the town of Baidoa on Sunday and Monday increases the pressure on African Union and Somali forces to fill the vacuum before Islamist militants take over the region.
Col. Ali Aden Houmed, the spokesman of the African Union force in Somalia, said Wednesday that the AU and Somali forces would secure the town.
Ethiopia’s withdrawal raises questions as to how long Ethiopia will continue to deploy troops in western Somalia cities. The Ethiopian government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
African Union forces primarily from Uganda, Burundi and Kenya are helping the Somali government fight against militants from al-Shabab.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The number of attacks by pirates worldwide has fallen in the last year but armed robbery and kidnappings at sea have surged off the coast of west Africa, a maritime body said on Monday.
Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), urged west and central African leaders to act on an agreement reached last month to tackle the problem.
“This (code of conduct) should be translated soon into action on the water. If these attacks are left unchecked, they will become more frequent, bolder and more violent,” he said.
“Cooperation and capacity building among the coastal states in this region is the way forward and urgently needed to make these waters safe for seafarers and vessels.”
In the first six months of this year, the London-based IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre recorded 138 incidents worldwide, compared to 177 in the same period in 2012.
Hijackings fell from 20 to seven so far in 2013, while the number of sailors taken hostage fell from 334 to 127, the quarterly report said.
Attacks off the coast of Somalia have dropped “significantly” in the first half of 2013, largely due to increased military action, the IMB’s report said.
But it warned of increased pirate activity in the Gulf of Guinea, recording 31 incidents in the region — 22 of which took place off the coast of Nigeria.
There has been a surge of kidnappings at sea and pirates are targeting a wider range of ship types in a region already known for attacks on oil industry vessels, the report said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland has suspended long-awaited local elections, its government said Sunday, saying the risk of violence was too great to hold them.
“Puntland hereby suspends the local council elections” due to held Monday, a government statement read, warning of what it called “domestic spoilers and external manipulators funding and organising instability and election violence”.
It gave no further details on who it feared would cause the violence.
However, United Nations special envoy to Somalia Nicholas Kay called the suspension “wise” and urged restraint from all sides “following violent clashes”.
Puntland, which forms the very tip of the Horn of Africa along the Indian Ocean coast and the Gulf of Aden, recognises the central government in Mogadishu, but wants autonomy within a federation of states.
Clashes have broken out in political rallies in the region — including in the town of Galkayo earlier this month in which five people were killed — although other demonstrations passed off peacefully.
While relatively stable compared to war-torn southern Somalia, it also hosts pirate gangs on its coastline as well as multiple militia forces, while Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab fighters have set up bases in its rugged Golis mountains.
Tensions have risen ahead of the elections, with the Puntland government clamping down on press freedom, including ordering shut three private radio stations.
Some opposition groups are accused by the government of operating their own militia forces.
No date has been set for the elections, with the Puntland government saying only they would be held “when it is appropriate”.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Row after row of tin shacks and shelters made of plastic and branches stretch almost as far as the eye can see in the world’s largest refugee camp, home to over 427,000 Somalis who fled war.
Dadaab, in northeast Kenya, is a grim place few would choose to call home, but many here are nervous about the growing pressure to leave this camp and return to their unstable homeland some last saw two decades ago.
Kenya, which hosts more than 600,000 Somali refugees, has made clear its ambition to send them back, and is in talks with the government in Mogadishu to start the move.
“I don’t know of a stable place in Somalia” to return to, said Abdi Arte, leader of the Kambios section in the sprawling camp, set in arid bushland some 100 kilometres (60 miles) inside Kenya.
“But the government is insisting to have refugees relocated back home.”
Last month, Kenya and Somalia signed a deal for “voluntary repatriation”, with plans under way to work out how people can start moving back.
Kenya’s new government has steered clear of strong-arm statements made last year when Nairobi ordered more than 30,000 refugees living in urban areas to return to remote and overcrowded camps.
But based on past experiences, refugees are worried.
Rights groups have accused Kenyan police of a brutal campaign against Somali refugees, following a string of grenade attacks or shootings inside Kenya blamed on supporters or members of Somalia’s Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents.
Human Rights Watch, in a report released in May, documented multiple cases of police rape of Somali refugees.
“The police held the detainees — sometimes for many days in inhuman and degrading conditions — while threatening to charge them, without any evidence, with terrorism or public order offences,” the report said.
Somali refugees say they are eyed with suspicion by police, even though many of those actually charged for attacks have not been ethnic Somalis.
Impoverished Somalia spiralled into repeated rounds of bloody civil war beginning in 1991, allowing piracy, militia armies and extremist rebels to flourish.
Last year an internationally-backed government took power in Mogadishu, defended by a 17,700-strong African Union force — including Kenyan troops — but its control beyond the capital remains fragile at best.
There is no doubt that many refugees long to be able to return to a safe home in Somalia. The problem is whether that is available.
“I want to go back home,” said Amina Yussuf, who lives in Dadaab’s Ifo 2, a crowded camp, insecure and beset by violence and abductions.
“I fear being raped here in the camp,” she added.
More than a million Somalis are refugees in regional nations, the most from a single country after Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the United Nations.
But another million people are displaced inside the country, a sign that Somalia is still very far from the stability needed for large scale return.
“It is not a good time to go back,” said Ibrahim Roble, a youth leader in Dadaab’s Dagahaley camp, who fled southern Somalia as a child.
“So many of us here in Dadaab are …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
At least three, and perhaps all, of the 15-man crew of a merchant vessel that sank last week while being held by Somali pirates are alive, their families said Saturday.
The Malaysian-flagged MV Albedo container ship, seized by Somali pirates in November 2010, sank last week in rough seas a short distance offshore from the pirate-held town of Hobyo, on central Somalia’s Indian Ocean coast.
While initially the crew were feared drowned, three have since been allowed to call their families, saying that 11 in total of the crew are alive, while four more are unaccounted for.
Begging for their release, families called on the pirates to let surviving crew members go, saying that now that the boat had sunk, its owners had no interest in paying ransom for its release.
“We appealed to everyone in this world to pay money towards the release of our people, but no one listened,” they said in a written appeal to the pirates.
“We are very poor people, we even do not have any money to pay for medicines, school fees, buy food for our children.”
The Albedo had more than 20 crew from several nations including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Iran on board when it was captured, but seven Pakistani sailors were released last August.
“Now, that the vessel has sunk… the owner has no interest to pay money and rescue the crew,” they added.
“At least release them on humanitarian grounds, else they will die in your hands.”
Pirates had initially claimed the crew had drowned, but later lifeboats from the Albedo were spotted onshore.
However, it is understood the sailors were transferred to another pirated vessel, a fishing boat called FV Nahem 3, which is tethered to the sunken hulk of the Albedo.
John Steed, head of an internationally-backed liason body, the Secretariat for Regional Maritime Security, said the crew and pirates on the Nahem are also in danger of sinking.
“We have told the pirates that the best scenario is for them to leave FV Naham 3, and allow us to arrange to recover the hostages,” Steed said.
Pirate attacks have been launched as far as 3,655 kilometres from the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean.
But in recent years, international naval patrols from China, Europe, United States and Russia have protected shipping and fought off pirate vessels, with the rate of attacks tumbling by 80 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to the European naval force for Somalia.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A federal appeals panel in Virginia has upheld the conviction of the highest-ranking pirate captured by the U.S. government.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed the conviction of Mohammad Saaili Shibin for his role in two acts of piracy.
One, in 2010, involved the hijacking of a merchant vessel and the other, in 2011, included the shooting deaths of four Americans aboard a yacht.
Shibin was a multilingual negotiator based in Somalia during both incidents. His attorneys argued that he could not be convicted of piracy because he never set out on the high seas.
The three judges disagreed on that point and others cited by Shibin’s attorneys in his appeal.
He has been sentenced to a dozen life sentences.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Somali insurgents killed at least five people Friday in multiple attacks in the capital Mogadishu, with a suicide bomber ramming an African Union convoy while later a grenade was thrown into a hotel.
Police official Ahmed Muktar said that three people were killed when a car laden with explosives smashed into the armoured AU convoy, the latest in a string of explosions in the dangerous capital.
Al-Qaeda linked Shebab fighters claimed members of their suicide brigade carried out the attack, calling it “a martyrdom operation targeting a convoy of crusaders”.
The hardline fighters boasted it would be “one of many that will make the kuffar (unbeliever) relinquish all hope in Mogadishu,” they said in a statement.
In previous years, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — which began this week — has seen a surge in Shebab attacks, with gunmen urged on by extremist preachers.
“I saw a car speeding towards the convoy, then it was a huge explosion, buildings all around were rocked by the blast,” said Hussein Gure, a witness who was driving nearby when the car exploded.
Witnesses said that a mass of roadside shacks near the blast site had been reduced to rubble.
The AU mission confirmed a car packed with explosives “attempted to hit” one of their armoured troop transport vehicles along one of Mogadishu’s main central highways, but that none of its troops were killed in the blast.
The Shebab have carried out a series of bombings and killings aimed at overthrowing the internationally-backed government.
Later on Friday, unknown insurgents hurled a grenade into the Barwaqo hotel in central Mogadishu, killing two people and wounding at least 10.
“There was a loud explosion, people were wounded, two people were killed,” said Ahmed Yasin Ibrahim, who was near the hotel during the attack.
Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon called the attacks “acts of terrorism” but vowed that they “will not derail the progress made in Mogadishu and across Somalia.”
In the past year, the Shebab have lost a string of towns to the 17,700-strong AU troops, which fights alongside government soldiers.
“The enemies of peace show their true colours to the world,” Shirdon added. “Muslims killing Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan.”
Shebab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab also claimed responsibility for a bomb beneath a fuel tanker belonging to the AU force in the town of Afgoye, northwest of Mogadishu.
That attack could not be immediately confirmed.
Despite recent infighting inside the Shebab — including the recent killing of top leaders in a bloody purge — analysts warn the extremist group is far from defeated.
Last month Shebab suicide commandos carried out a brazen daylight attack on a fortified United Nations compound.
Key Shebab strongholds remaining include rural southern and central Somalia, while another faction has dug into remote and rugged mountains in the northern, semi-autonomous Puntland region.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A man who the FBI said wanted to wage violent jihad in Africa pleaded on guilty on Friday to a charge of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
Randy Lamar Wilson, 26, pleaded guilty in federal court in Mobile. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, he could face 15 years in federal prison, contingent on the information he provides about co-conspirators. U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose set an Oct. 18 sentencing date for Wilson.
Wilson was arrested in December at the Atlanta airport while boarding a flight with his family to Mauritania.
The same day, agents arrested 25-year-old Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, Wilson’s former business partner. Charges against Abukhdair are still pending and his trial is set for August.
Federal prosecutors portrayed Wilson as an Islamic radical who wanted to reunite with Omar Hammami, an American who also grew up in Alabama and became one of the most well-known jihadists in Somalia.
Wilson told DuBose on Friday that he believed the government could prove that he intended to participate in violent jihad overseas.
Federal prosecutors said Wilson intended to “murder, maim and kidnap” people overseas.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Bodnar said the government could prove that Wilson and Abukhdair made extensive plans to travel to a country where they could participate in a religious war. Bodnar said the two men wanted to disguise their reason for traveling as tourism or academic study.
“He knew at all times that he was participating in an illegal conspiracy,” Bodnar said.
Domingo Soto, Wilson’s attorney, said Wilson would provide information about Abukhdair and others as part of the plea agreement.
“He wanted to plead guilty,” Soto said. “As far as I’m concerned, this still has to do with free-speech issue,” said Soto, who has said that Wilson’s statements could have been misconstrued or taken out of context by government agents.
“He is pretty fatalistic about this,” Soto said. He said Wilson believed a jury pool would be tainted by the emotional issues surrounding terrorism.
Wilson was stoic on Friday, wearing a beige jail jumpsuit with arm and leg
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/tlUbN5EdJuU/
An Alabama man who the FBI said wanted to wage violent jihad in Africa has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
Randy Lamar Wilson pleaded guilty in federal court in Mobile on Friday. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, he could face 15 years in federal prison, contingent on the information he provides about co-conspirators.
He was arrested in December at the Atlanta airport while boarding a flight with his family to Mauritania.
Federal prosecutors portrayed Wilson as an Islamic radical who wanted to reunite with Omar Hammami, an American who also grew up in Alabama and became one of the most well-known jihadists in Somalia.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/8z0GNqX5OGg/
A police chief says that a masked gunman believed to be a member of an al-Qaida-linked Somalia militant group stormed a hotel in a Kenyan city near the border with Somalia and opened fire with an assault rifle, killing nine people.
Vitalis Okumu said Friday that the Thursday night attack could have been in retaliation for military activity carried out by African Union forces, which Kenya is a part of, against al-Shabab militants in Somalia.
Garissa lies near the border with Somalia and has suffered a string of attacks over the last 18 months by gunmen believed to be associated with al-Shabab.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/sWR0ciFGBYY/
Outside a dilapidated two-story building, Abdi Ali says goodbye to his veiled girlfriend Anisa and they take two separate streets to avoid attention. Soon they’re aboard a minibus heading outside Mogadishu, pretending they don’t know each other.
After more than two hours of travel, they arrive at Walaweyn, a run-down town 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Mogadishu, and are led inside a shanty by a man running a string of Arab worry beads through his fingers. Another man and woman walk out; they have just been married. Abdi Ali, who is 25, and his 23-year-old girlfriend will be next.
Since the Islamic extremist rebels of al-Shabab have been pushed out of almost all of Somalia‘s cities and towns, life has begun to return to normal. Under its strict interpretation of Islamic Shariah law, al-Shabab had declared eloping illegal, punishable by whipping or even death by stoning. Now that the extremists’ harsh rule has been replaced by a more tolerant form of Islam, elopement once again is popular among young Somali couples, many of whom have dramatic stories of defying their families to follow their hearts and marry.
In the case of Ali and Anisa, they had dated in secret for two years. Anisa, who refused to give her full name for fear of family retribution, said they decided to elope after her parents refused her request to marry Ali, intending her to marry a cousin in America.
“They tried to turn down my choice, and I had to do the same against their will,” said Anisa, her soft voice and shy demeanor belying her determination. “You can’t be engaged with just a stranger you have been forced to marry. We are living a civilized world.”
Anisa, with hennaed hands and bangle bracelets, is studying business at a Mogadishu university. She looks fondly at Ali, a lanky man with wispy hair who works as a tailor.
Walaweyn appears an unlikely marriage destination. It is little more than a crossroads with many of its buildings made of poles and dried cow dung, which is fitting as most of the residents are cow herders.
Walaweyn’s elopement activity is one of the most visible signs that the tight grip that Islamic militiamen once held here has loosened. After the al-Shabab rebels left in October 2012, elopement became an industry in this town. There are several eloping rooms, including some in buildings that once housed al-Shabab extremists. Guides welcome new arrivals to
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/wBOAPAec3bM/
A sentencing hearing has begun for the first of two New Jersey men who pleaded guilty to trying to join an armed Islamic group in Somalia in order to wage holy war against non-Muslims.
An attorney for Mohamed Alessa, of North Bergen, is arguing his client was more a misguided teenager manipulated by an undercover New York Police Department officer than a hardened would-be terrorist.
Alessa and Carlos Almonte, of Elmwood Park, could face decades in prison.
The two pleaded guilty in March 2011 to conspiring to join a group with ties to al-Qaida.
They were arrested in June 2010 at New York’s Kennedy Airport as they prepared to board separate planes to Egypt.
The case is being heard in federal court in Newark.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/Qtf5zdP7pd8/
