A candidate for the presidency in Somalia said yesterday he would encourage his supporters to kill Iraqis in Somalia if the Somali truck driver kidnapped in Iraq was beheaded by his captors. "If they (the Iraqis) behead our loved ones, we will behead their loved ones," presidential hopeful Hussein Ali Elmi was quoted by news agencies as saying. Elmi dismissed as too soft the Kenyan government's position of asking their citizens to leave Iraq after three Kenyans were abducted there last week.
Elmi said there were a few hundred Iraqis in Somalia, mainly working as shopkeepers in the capital Mogadishu. Most of them fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule. Elmi said, however, that he himself would not behead anybody, but instead would ask his militias to do it. "There is no other way to defend our people," he said. There are 56 presidential candidates for Somalia. A group of around 20 are considered the Young Turks. Elmi, himself a Young Turk, said that if one of them becomes president, they would want to immediately send Somali troops to assist the new Iraqi government. |