Hidden hands: Somali government fighting terrorist penetration

Ahmed Adel

Somalia’s al Shabaab terrorist movement is seeking to lay a hidden hand inside the federal government to spy and receive information about acts by the army and police forces against the movement.

The death of Mogadishu Mayor Abdul Rahman Omar Osman Yerso on the first of August – affected by his wounds after being targeted in a movement attack on the town hall on 24 July last, carried out by a blind woman – highlighted the fact that the penetration of the group’s elements into the Somali government.

The following is a list of the most important figures in the federal government, which supports the youth movement during the last period.

Baseera Abdi Mohamed, nicknamed the ‘blind suicide bomber’, has been working in the Somali government as the special needs coordinator for the mayor of Mogadishu since May 2018, and has been conducting the attack on the town hall.

Abdul Wali Mohamed Mao: is the former chairman of the board of trustees of Mogadishu airport, who was convicted in 2016 of helping smuggle a bomb in a laptop for someone affiliated to al-Shabab movement.

Abdessalam Mohamed Hassan, a senior official within the National Intelligence and Security Agency, who served in the post in 2014 and, according to Somali press reports, provided al-Shabaab with photos and data of the agency’s employees, was arrested, and is now serving a life sentence.

Hassan Mohieldin is a telecommunications company employee inside the Somali presidential palace, and has contributed to the movement’s attack on the presidential palace, which killed four people, and was sentenced in August 2014, to death for disclosing classified information about the movements of President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, who was heading to the office of the mayor of Mogadishu.

Fahad Yassin, the Doha man in the Somali government, is the director of the presidential palace and deputy head of the Somali intelligence service. During his tenure at Al-Jazeera, Yassin called al-Shabaab words such as “opposition group” or “national liberation force” and engaged in dialogues with members of the movement.

Media reports indicate that Yassin was involved in a subversive scheme led by Qatar, Turkey and Iran aimed at establishing an armed movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

After assuming his mission in the intelligence service, he succeeded in overthrowing Abdullah Abdullah, a powerful general in the NISS, who exposed Fahd Yassin’s relationship with al-Shabaab and some terrorist movements funded by Qatar under humanitarian and relief cover.