Thursday, September 4, 2014

Somalia Offers Amnesty to Al-Shabaab Amid Reports of Leader’s Death

9/4/2014

MOGADISHU – Somalia’s government offered an amnesty to members of the radical Islamist militia al-Shabaab as rumors spread through the country’s capital on Wednesday that the group’s charismatic, ruthless leader had been killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Government sources indicated that al Shabaab commander Ahmed Abdi Godane was targeted in an attack, but they did not say whether he was killed.

After a meeting that ran into the early hours of the morning, senior officials said the amnesty offer would expire in 45 days, and thanked the armed forces for their role in combating al-Shabaab.

They also called on clerics to “join the war against al-Shabaab’s ideological mobilization.”

Godane, 37, become leader of al-Shabaab in 2008, when a U.S. airstrike killed his predecessor, Aden Hashi Ayro. The following year, the group formally affiliated with the al-Qaeda terror network.

The death of Godane would be “a very significant blow” to al-Shabaab, the U.S. Defense Department said.

Somalia has been consumed by civil war and chaos since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted, leaving the country in the hands of Islamist militias, tribal warlords and armed criminal gangs.


source

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