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| Africa Horn |
| Somalia's Shebab Plays Down Surrender of Wanted Official |
| 2014-12-30 |
| Somalia's Shebab militia on Monday played down the surrender and arrest of a senior militant figure, saying the official had left the movement more than a year ago. The al-Qaida-affiliated rebels said Zakariya Ismail Ahmed Hersi, identified as a top Shebab intelligence official and the subject of a $3 million bounty as part of the U.S. State Department "Rewards for Justice" program, would be of little intelligence value. "He abandoned the organisation more than a year ago," a senior militant official told Agence France Presse, insisting that the "news of the defection was only released in order to shift attention" away from last week's Shebab attack against the headquarters of the African Union force in the capital Mogadishu. "All the information on military set up or plans he knew has been changed since he left, and therefore the so-called defector has no intelligence value to offer to our enemies," the Shebab official said. He also said the surrender should not be seen as a weakening of the movement, which is fighting to topple Somalia's internationally-backed government. |
| Posted by:badanov |