Somali court postpones hearing of press freedom case as it collides 8th anniv. of journalist’s attack

MOGADISHU (HORN OBSERVER) A court in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has postponed the hearing of the press freedom case in which the secretary-general of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) Abdalle Mumin is a defendant, the court said in a short message on Wednesday.

The fourth hearing was scheduled to take place on Thursday 26 January, however, the day marks another important incident: it is the day when armed men – suspected to be members of the islamist group al-Shabaab nearly killed Mr. Mumin in the downtown Mogadishu forcing him and his family to flee to safety in Nairobi, Kenya in 2015.

Mumin’s defense lawyers who first received the court communication said they were surprised to learn that the Thursday hearing was postponed to indefinitely.

“Earlier on Wednesday, we got the text message from the chairman of the Banadir Regional Court who said he had canceled the scheduled hearing for Thursday. He only cited security reasons,” said lawyer Dahir Mohamed Ali “We were not given any new date but we are waiting to hear from them.”

In a tweer, SJS said the hearing day would mark the day “26 Jan. 2023 marks 8th anniversary of the day @Cabdalleaxmed survived an attack on his life”.

In a 2015 Al Jazeera article, journalist Michael Onyiego wrote that before Mumin “was forced to flee Somalia, it did seem as if things were finally improving in the country after more than two decades of war. In 2011, the joint African Union and United Nations forces wrested control of Mogadishu from al-Shabab, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda that had seized large swaths of southern Somalia since their emergence in 2006”.

Now, eight years later, Mumin had returned to Somalia and became part of a group of journalists who founded a leading union of journalists, the SJS, which speaks for the local journalists including those from minority communities. But he is facing another threat on his life and this time it is from the Somali government.

“The same government which was supposed to provide protection and safety for the journalists is now threatening and persecuting the leader of the journalists union Abdalle Mumin,” said Mohamed Ibrahim who is the president of SJS.

In October, the union’s office was raided by armed men suspected to be members of the western-supported Somali national intelligence agency after a four media associations – including the SJS – expressed their concern on a new government directive which could curtail media freedom in the troubled Horn of African country. A day later, on October 11, the SJS secretary-general Abdalle Mumin was detained as he was boarding a flight to Nairobi

According to SJS, four months have passed since the raid of their office and arbitrary detention of its secretary-general who was held at the notorious Godka Jila’ow prison where his health deteriorated. No perpetrator was held accountable for these violations even though the perpetrators are publicly known.