Somali journo tells of release

2008-10-06 12:56

Mogadishu - A Somali radio journalist arrested after covering a mortar attack on the home of Somalia's parliamentary speaker said Monday he has been released on bail.

"(The police) released me late Sunday (on) bail and they told me that investigations against me will be going on for seven days," Ali Ilyas Abdullahi said.

"They took my mobile phone saying they need to investigate all messages and numbers inside the memory, but I don't know (of) anything wrong I did," added Abdullahi, a reporter for Holy Koran radio in Somalia's provisional capital, Baidoa, about 250km northwest of Mogadishu.

Abdullahi was arrested on Saturday as he returned to his office.

"I went out to report the story on the mortar attack on the speaker's house as well as another story on a security officer who has been shot dead (Saturday) in the town by insurgents," he said.

"Before I released my stories, (the police) arrested me as I walked inside the town," he said.

After Abdullahi's arrest, parliament speaker Sheikh Adan Mohamed Nur accused local media of siding with Islamists who were ousted from power nearly two years ago by Ethiopia-backed Somali forces.

Resorting to guerrilla tactics targeting Ethiopian, Somali and African Union peacekeepers, mainly in Mogadishu, the Islamists have been gaining ground over recent months.

The war-wracked Horn of Africa nation was ranked as the world's second-deadliest country for journalists throughout 2007 by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

- AFP