Hiiraan Online
Thursday, June 30, 2011
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Faysal Mohamed Hassan (Center) was detained by Puntland authorities
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Nairobi, Kenya (HOL) - Authorities in the Semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland have been holding a local journalist incommunicado since morning hours on Wednesday.
Sources in the Northern city of Bossaso revealed that one Hiiraan Online correspondent was detained since mid morning hours in a preventive detention under what appears to be the region’s far-reaching anti-media operation.
Faysal Mohamed Hassan aka Boston who has been reporting for the online portal, a leading Somalia news source, has been ransacked from his office in down town Bossaso, the business city of the Eastern region of Puntland.
Regional security personnel led Boston without giving explanation for his detention as local sources told Hiraan Online that until late into the night the journalist was still detained.
"Today at exactly 11:30 Bossaso time, an armed contigent of local police took Boston out of his workplace in the town. Until now he is under arrest in the local police station” a Bossaso-based journalist told HOL
Hiiraan Online Officials were not told what led to t he arrest of their regional journalist and are seeking explanation from the authorities of Puntland.
A Journalists’ professional group in the capital Mogadishu has criticized the arrest of Mr. Boston saying it is a way to muzzle the free and fair media in the country.
Journalists in Somalia are commonly arrested, tortured, extorted, robbed and most cruelly killed by all sides involved in Somalia’s dirty political struggle including Somali government, the none-militants and the Alqaeda-allied extremists.
Somalia is described the most dangerous place for journalists to work in the world after the Philippines. For the past few years, hundreds of journalists fled Somalia and most of them are currently living in neighboring States like Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda.