SOMALIA: Journalist expelled from Jowhar

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 10 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - A radio journalist who was detained for six days in the Somali town of Jowhar, the temporary seat of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), has been released without charge and banished from the town, his employer said on Wednesday.

Abdullahi Adow, an employee of the independent HornAfrik radio station, was arrested in Jowhar on 2 August by militiamen, local sources said.

"He was released and was immediately escorted out of town and told not to return," Ali Iman, managing partner of HornAfrik, told IRIN. Adow, he added, was not physically tortured or mistreated during his incarceration.

The authorities in Jowhar, located 90 km north of the capital, Mogadishu, have not disclosed the reasons for his arrest or subsequent expulsion, he added.

Adow had on 2 August filed a report alleging that senior officials of the TFG were being housed in a local school, and had said parents of children attending the school had demanded that the officials vacate it before the start of a new term.

Iman said the Mogadishu-based HornAfrik would not send another reporter to Jowhar "for the time being. It will be very difficult covering the TFG and what is happening there, but we have no choice".

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which had on 3 August demanded the unconditional release of the journalist, on Tuesday called on the Somali authorities to end the harassment of journalists.

"It is outrageous that journalists cannot report freely on the activities of officials who are supposed to be steering the country to peace and democracy," Ann Cooper, executive director of the CPJ, said in a statement.

"We call on [interim Somali] President Abdullahi Yusuf to ensure an immediate end to arbitrary detentions and harassment of journalists, and allow all media to cover the operations of the TFG in Jowhar," she added.

President Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi have made Jowhar the temporary seat of the interim government, arguing that Mogadishu remains too insecure.

However, an estimated 100 members of the TFG and the transitional parliament - led by national assembly speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden - have chosen to operate from Mogadishu.

In June, HornAfrik journalist Duniya Muhyadin was shot dead in Mogadishu as she covered a protest in the city, and in May, another HornAfrik journalist, Abdallah Nurdin Ahmad, was shot and wounded by an unknown gunman.

Somalia has had no effective central government since the overthrow of President Siyad Barre's administration in 1991. Faction leaders and their militias took advantage of the ensuing anarchy to carve the country into fiefdoms over which they frequently fought.

The TFG was set up in neighbouring Kenya in October 2004 following two years of peace talks between various Somali clans and factions sponsored by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.

[ENDS]