October 24, 2021

Detained Former Al-Shabab Commander Says Detention Political

A former al-Shabab commander who is under house arrest in Somalia says he is being held to prevent him from seeking elected office.

Mukhtar Robow Ali, popularly known as Abu Mansour, was the deputy leader of al-Shabab and had been sought by the United States, which once had a $5 million bounty on his head. He defected from the terror group after violently clashing with them in August 2017. The Somali government initially hailed his defection but later arrested him to stop him from running for president of the Southwest region back in 2018, when it held its last leadership election.

Speaking from Mogadishu, where he has been under house arrest since 2018, Abu Mansour told VOA Somali that his detention was politically motivated.

“I was detained to stop me from running,” he said. “I was detained in order to hijack the Southwest election,” he added.

His comments, made last Thursday, come as Somalia is in the middle of elections to choose lawmakers for parliament’s lower and upper chambers.

The 275 lawmakers from the Lower House and 54 senators from the Upper House will choose a national president at the end of the current election process. Southwest is one of five regions that plays a major role in the election of lawmakers who choose the head of state.

President Farmaajo is running for reelection and competing against more than a dozen people who have declared their candidacy, including two former presidents.

Abu Mansour says he does not want Farmaajo elected to a second term.

“To all Somalis everywhere, don’t give Farmaajo a single vote,” he said.

Abu Mansour says he is not giving up on running for political office despite being in detention for almost three years.

“I will always be ready to work for the development of our people and our country,” he said. “I will not be demoralized; if I don’t die, I will continue that journey.”

Abu Mansour said he decided to contact VOA, alleging he has been “abducted” and that he has been denied his basic rights.

Abu Mansour said he feels unsafe under house arrest.

“I can’t say my safety is secured.”

VOA reached out to the presidential palace and the leaders of Southwest State, but they have not responded to requests for comment. The government defended its decision to block his political aspirations. The internal security ministry said Abu Mansour did not meet all the preconditions for running for office. The Somali government said Abu Mansour was still under sanctions by members of the international community for his prior membership with al-Shabab.

Abu Mansour says despite being in detention for almost three years, government officials never spoke to him in person about the reasons behind his arrest. Abu Mansour said he received a message through his traditional elder who told him the government would send him to an unnamed country if he were willing to take the opportunity. Abu Mansour said he rejected the proposition.

“I will not go into exile; this is where I was born, and I will die here.”

Qatar is the only country that has agreed to accept high-profile al-Shabab defectors so far. In February 2016, Qatar agreed to give asylum to Mohamed Said Atom, a former commander of Al-Shabab in the Galgala Mountains of Puntland, following his defection.

In his interview with VOA, Abu Mansour condemned the militant group for targeting civilians and carrying out unlawful killings, including religious scholars.

“I left al-Shabab because of differences over credence,” he said.

Asked if he regrets becoming a member of al-Shabab, Abu Mansour said he did not become involved in “plots” while in the militant group.

“Whatever the mistakes I made I repent to Allah; no one is forcing me to say that; but I don’t regret whatever the good things I have done.”

In June 2017, the United States withdrew its $5 million reward offer for the capture of Abu Mansour.

Source: Voice of America

October 24, 2021

UN Security Council Mission Visits Mali, Urges February Vote

A U.N. Security Council mission that is visiting Mali this weekend to assess the security situation is urging the country’s authorities to set elections for February to meet agreements reached with a West African regional bloc after a coup last year.

The mission led by Kenya’s ambassador to the U.N., Martin Kimani, met with civil society organizations, groups that have signed a peace agreement, Mali’s prime minister and transitional president, Col. Assimi Goita, during their weekend visit.

“I was struck by the thirst for reform (both political and institutional) that is desired by most of the Malian population,” Kimani Sunday said at a news conference. “We are now waiting for the end of the transition period which should lead to the organization of elections.”

However, Malian authorities have said after the meetings with the U.N. Security Council mission, they want to organize days of consultations in December amongst Malian groups to determine a path toward elections.

“The Malian authorities have spoken to us about these meetings as a prerequisite for the elections. These meetings will take place in December,” said Abdou Abarry, Nigeria’s ambassador to the U.N. who was a part of the delegation. “We are not opposed to it, but only insist it does not delay the end of the transition and give Malians the opportunity to choose their leaders.”

Abarry said that Goita assured the delegation that “the transitional authorities are not here to stay in power and any commitments the transitional authorities will make will be in the interest of Malians.”

Goita seized power in August 2020 by overthrowing Mali’s democratically elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who had only served two years of his five-year term after being reelected in 2018. Goita eventually agreed to a transitional government led by a civilian president but ousted those leaders in May after they announced a Cabinet reshuffle that sidelined two junta supporters without consulting him.

Goita was then sworn in as president of the transitional government in June. He has pledged to keep the country on track to return to civilian rule with an election in February 2022.

The U.N. diplomats also raised the issue of security in Mali. The peacekeeping mission in Mali remains the deadliest of all the U.N. missions since 2013.

“The Malian authorities have insisted that they are putting much emphasis on security challenges, and MINUSMA (the U.N. mission in Mali) is ready to help them, especially in Central Mali where there is the highest threat of terrorism,” said Nicolas de Rivière, France’s ambassador to the U.N.

Mali has been fighting growing insecurity since 2012, when al-Qaida-linked groups took over parts of the north. Despite a French-led military operation that forced many rebels from their northern strongholds in 2013, insurgents quickly regrouped and have been advancing year after year toward the south of the country, where the Malian capital is located. They also launch frequent attacks on the Malian army and its allies.

Source: Voice of America

October 24, 2021

Pope: Don’t Send Migrants Back to Libya and ‘Inhumane’ Camps

Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned plea to end the practice of returning migrants rescued at sea to Libya and other unsafe countries where they suffer “inhumane violence.”

Francis also waded into a highly contentious political debate in Europe, calling on the international community to find concrete ways to manage the “migratory flows” in the Mediterranean.

“I express my closeness to the thousands of migrants, refugees and others in need of protection in Libya,” Francis said. “I never forget you, I hear your cries and I pray for you.”

Even as the pontiff appealed for changes of migrant policy and of heart in his remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square, hundreds of migrants were either at sea in the central Mediterranean awaiting a port after rescue or recently coming ashore in Sicily or the Italian mainland after setting sail from Libya or Turkey, according to authorities.

“So many of these men, women and children are subject to inhumane violence,” he added. “Yet again I ask the international community to keep the promises to search for common, concrete and lasting solutions to manage the migratory flows in Libya and in all the Mediterranean.”

“How they suffer, those who are sent back” after rescue at sea, the pope said. Detention facilities in Libya, he said “are true concentration camps.”

“We need to stop sending back [migrants] to unsafe countries and to give priority to the saving of human lives at sea with protocols of rescue and predictable disembarking, to guarantee them dignified conditions of life, alternatives to detention, regular paths of migration and access to asylum procedures,” Francis said.

U.N. refugee agency officials and human rights organizations have long denounced the conditions of detention centers for migrants in Libya, citing practices of beatings, rape and other forms of torture and insufficient food. Migrants endure weeks and months of those conditions, awaiting passage in unseaworthy rubber dinghies or rickety fishing boats arranged by human traffickers.

Hours after the pope’s appeal, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders said that its rescue ship, Geo Barents, reached a rubber boat that was taking on water, with the sea buffeted by strong winds and waves up to three meters (10 feet) high. It tweeted that “we managed to rescue all the 71 people on board.”

The group thanked the charity group Alarm Phone for signaling that the boat crowded with migrants was in distressed.

Earlier, Geo Barents, then with 296 migrants aboard its rescue ship, was awaiting permission in waters off Malta to disembark. Six migrants tested positive for COVID-19, but because of the crowded conditions aboard, it was difficult to keep them sufficiently distant from the others, Doctors Without Borders said.

In Sicily, a ship operated by the German charity Sea-Watch, with 406 rescued migrants aboard, was granted permission to enter port. But Sea-Watch said that a rescue vessel operated by a Spanish charity, with 105 migrants aboard, has been awaiting a port assignment to disembark them for four days.

While hundreds of thousands of migrants have departed in traffickers’ boats for European shores in recent years and set foot on Sicily or nearby Italian islands, many reach the Italian mainland.

Red Cross officials in Roccella Ionica, a town on the coast of the “toe” of the Italian peninsula said on Sunday that about 700 migrants, some of them from Afghanistan, reached the Calabrian coast in recent days on boats that apparently departed from Turkey.

Authorities said so far this year, about 3,400 migrants had reached Roccella Ionica, a town of 6,000 people, compared to 480 in all of 2019. The migrants who arrived in the last several days were being housed in tent shelters, RAI state television said.

Italy and Malta have come under criticism by human rights advocates for leaving migrants aboard crowded rescue boats before assigning them a safe port.

The Libyan coast guard, which has been trained and equipped by Italy, has also been criticized for rescuing migrants in Libyan waters and then returning them to land where the detention centers awaited them.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders tweeted that crew aboard the Geo Barents had “witnessed an interception” by the Libyan coast guard and that the migrants “”will be forcibly taken to dangerous detention facilities and exposed to violence and exploitation.”

With rising popularity of right-wing, anti-migrant parties in Italy in recent years, the Italian government has been under increasing domestic political pressure to crack down on illegal immigration.

Italy and Malta have lobbied theirs European Union partner countries, mainly in vain, to take in some of those rescued at sea.

Source: Voice of America