Police Quells Protest Sparked By Picture Purporting To Be Of Terror Suspect Undergoing Torture

Hargeysa, Somaliland, September 30, 2006 (SL Times) – A small crowd of demonstrators went to the street in the Somaliland capital on Friday to protest the alleged use of torture against a detainee suspected of involvement in terrorism.

The demonstration which started on 13:30 at central Hargeysa was swiftly broken up by police.

The protest was sparked by pictures purporting to be of suspected terrorist Mohamed Sheikh Ismail while being tortured by his interrogators. The pictures were first published by an obscure website (www.hawdiyonugal.com).

However different independent experts who examined the pictures had all concluded that the pictures were fake.

Yesterday’s demonstrators were mostly women and children from neighborhoods in the southern part of the town. At least 8 women and 2 men wearing the Afghanistan style Hijab clothing were arrested.

Mohamed Sheikh Ismail was arrested by the police on September 23 in connection with a terrorist attack foiled by the Somaliland security authorities 2 days earlier.

On the evening of September 21, 2006, police raided a number of houses in Hargeysa after receiving information that a group of extremists sent from Mogadishu by Hassan Dahir Aweys were about to carryout terrorist attacks in the Somaliland capital with aim of disrupting the September 29 parliamentary elections and taking some foreign observers as hostages. A number of terrorist suspects were arrested as a result of the operation.

Mohamed Sheikh Ismail ran a Madrassa and Exorcism clinic. His father Sheikh Ismail served at one time in Siyad Barre’s dreaded Secret Service.

Though the faked pictures started appearing on www.hawdiyonugal.com by September 20, the Somaliland government however made no effort to dispute the authencity of the images. Both the Somali Service of the BBC and Al-Jazeera rejected the pictures as fake.

But the Somaliland government wasn’t even aware about the display of the pictures on the pro Islamic Courts www.hawdiyonugal.com. The Somaliland minister of Information was rather busy with plotting on how to sack over 30 staff members of Radio Hargeysa.

It wasn’t yet clear why the Somaliland security authorities remained indifferent at a time when extremists were openly trying to organize havoc in downtown Hargeysa.