President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed

No luxury cruise but a ticket to jihad was the prize for the winners of a team quiz organised by Somalia's insurgent Shebab group during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. "The reason the young men were rewarded with weapons is to encourage them to participate in the ongoing holy war against the enemies of Allah in Somalia," Sheikh Abdullahi Alhaq said at a ceremony late Friday. The radio-broadcast quiz organised by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab organisation in the southern Somali city of Kismayo lasted throughout Ramadan, which ended last month. Five neighbourhoods of the port city entered the competition, which consisted mainly of questions ... Read Full Story

Somalia's hardline Shebab Islamists on Monday publicly executed two people accused of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency and the country's embattled government. They were killed by a firing squad in the capital Mogadishu after Shebab militia judge Sheikh Abdullahi Al-Haq pronounced a guilty verdict on them. "Hassan Moalim Abdullahi is found guilty of spying for the USA. He has been poven beyond any shadow of doubt that he belongs to the CIA," Al-Haq said of the first individual. "The defendant said that he served the CIA and admitted his misdeeds," he said without elaborating. The second defendant was accused of guiding government ... Read Full Story

Over the long months that federal investigators delved into the baffling recruitment of young men who left Minneapolis to fight with Islamic militants in Somalia, the city's Somali community grappled with the fear they would all be branded terrorists. But this week as the FBI netted its first grand jury indictments in the case, many hope the arrests of two Somali men will spell the beginning of the end of an investigation that has wracked their struggling community. Minneapolis is home about 32,000 Somalis _the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S. — most of whom fled the Somalia in the 1990s to ... Read Full Story

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - A federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted two men on Monday on charges of conspiracy and aiding terrorism overseas, according to court papers. The Minneapolis Star Tribune said on Monday that one of the men, Salah Osman Ahmed, 26, is of Somali descent and lived in a Minneapolis suburb. According to the indictment, Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse were charged with two counts of providing material support to terrorists "and resources, namely personnel including themselves," and conspiring "to kill, kidnap, and maim and injure persons outside of the United States" between September 2007 and December 2008. Ahmed was also charged with ... Read Full Story

AL-JAZEERA Somali fighters are reportedly urging pirates holding a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware to destroy the cargo and the vessel if they are not paid ransom. With US warships and other navies blockading the MV Faina off Somalia's Indian Ocean coast, the pirates are insisting on being paid $20 million to release the cargo and the 21-member crew. "If they do not get the money they are demanding, we call on them to either burn down the ship and its arms or sink it," Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a spokesman for the Shabab movement, said. Links denied Robow said his group, which is gradually ... Read Full Story