| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa: Horn |
| Jugged Somali al-Qaeda now up to 6 |
| 2005-09-24 |
| Authorities in the breakaway enclave of Somaliland arrested six al Qaeda suspects accused of planning attacks in the lead-up to next week's parliamentary poll, officials said on Friday. Somaliland Interior Minister Ismail Osman Aden said heavy machine guns, two boxes of anti-tank mines and a large cache of ammunition were retrieved in the operation late on Thursday. "The terrorists we have arrested are from the al Qaeda cell in Mogadishu. They include a terrorist on the list of internationally wanted terrorists," he told Reuters, declining to identify the suspects. Some of the suspects included locals from the former British protectorate that broke away from Somalia in 1991, he added. Somaliland, a relatively stable enclave which is not recognised internationally, is preparing to hold its second multiparty elections next week. "These terrorists were planning to kill senior government officials and some prominent foreigners and destroy buildings to create chaos in this election week or on the voting day," Osman said. Four suspects were arrested in a raid on a house in the main city of Hargeisa. The other two were detained separately. A doctor in the main hospital in Hargeisa said three policemen were wounded in the operation. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 Crap, they're all locals: Sep 24, 2005 — By Hussein Ali Nur HARGEISA, Somalia (Reuters) - The self-declared republic of Somaliland said on Saturday eight al Qaeda suspects arrested days before a parliamentary election were all locals from Islamic religious circles. Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin accused the detainees of "disguising" themselves as clerics to plot attacks prior to the September 29 poll. Police in the Somaliland region of Burao said one of them — taken in the latest swoop on Friday night — was a prominent local cleric Sheikh Mohamed Mohamoud Nur. "Islam is a religion of peace, but terrorists, like chameleons, change colors and try the one they can easily blend with," Kahin told a new conference. The suspects, who are accused of working for the al Qaeda network, were all Somaliland locals but trained outside in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, he added. |
| Posted by: steve 2005-09-24 11:10 |
| #2 Dan, could the wanted terrorist be Faisal Abdullah Mohammed or is that hoping for too much? |
| Posted by: Jim G. 2005-09-24 06:40 |
| #1 As we all know it's not allen's will for there to be any part of that former state that is safe or stable. I am wondering how many of these guys are "leaders"? Are they just the typical 9,999th most important members of al-Qaeda like 99.9% of the usual bunch. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-09-24 00:16 |