SOMALIA
No Longer Welcome
Somalia has ordered United Nations envoy Nicholas Haysom to leave the country after he raised questions about the arrest of a former al-Shabab leader who had run for a regional presidency.
A foreign ministry statement late Tuesday declared Haysom “persona non grata” and accused him of diplomatic overreach after he questioned the legal basis for the arrest last month of Mukhtar Robow, a former al-Shabab spokesman who defected from the group in 2017, the Associated Press reported.
Haysom also asked whether UN troops had been involved in his detention. Ethiopian soldiers from the African Union force in Somalia and local police made the arrest a few days before the regional election – in which Robow was one of the leading candidates.
The arrest sparked deadly protests, as Robow was spirited away to a Mogadishu prison run by the country’s intelligence service.
The incident is a test case for how Somalia will deal with defectors from al-Shabab, Africa’s most active extremist group, the agency said.
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