Sunday, August 18, 2013
Two gunmen shot dead a technician employed at Somalia's state-run
broadcaster Radio Mogadishu on Saturday, the sixth media professional
killed in the country this year, officials and a colleague said."Two
men armed with pistols shot Ahmed Sharif and escaped the scene. He was
rushed to hospital but he died instantly," said colleague Mohamed Sacid.
Sharif
was gunned down near his home in the capital Mogadishu just hours after
Somalia publicly executed the only person to be convicted to date of
killing a journalist in the country, ranked as one of the worst in the
world for reporters.
Deputy Information Minister Abdishakur Ali Mire confirmed the death to reporters.
"We
condemn the killing," he said. "He was an innocent man who did nothing
wrong and we expect the law enforcement departments to bring those
responsible to justice."
Watchdog group Reporters Without Borders
(RSF) has called the security situation for media personnel in Somalia's
cities "deplorable".
The country ranks 175th out of 179 countries in the group's 2013 Press Freedom Index.
Eighteen
media professionals were killed in Somalia in 2012 -- the country's
deadliest year on record, according to Reporters Without Borders -- and
about 50 have been killed in the last six years.
Sharif's killing
came on the same day that convicted murderer Adan Sheikh Abdi was
executed by firing squad in a Mogadishu square for the September 2012
killing of well-known journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge.
It was not immediately clear whether the attack on Sharif was linked to the execution.
Adan
Sheikh Abdi was tried by a military tribunal as a "combatant" for
belonging to Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgency. He was
sentenced to death in March and his subsequent appeal was rejected.
Absuge,
programming director at independent broadcaster Radio Maanta, was
gunned down in Mogadishu as he left the radio station after working a
night shift.
His killer is the first person to be put on trial for a journalist's murder in Somalia.
Saturday's
shooting comes just over a month after unidentified gunmen killed
Somali journalist Liban Abdulahi Farah, who worked for a newly launched
satellite TV sation, as he was on his way home in the central town of
Galkayo.
Somalia has been ravaged by conflict since 1991, but a
new UN-backed government took power last year, raising hopes of an end
to decades of war.
The attacks on journalists are often blamed on
the Shebab Islamists, but some are also believed to be linked to a
settling of scores within the multiple factions in power.
International
press rights groups have repeatedly voiced their concern, with
Reporters Without Borders warning Somalia "cannot continue to be
abandoned... to the killers who are decimating civil society."