MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – Authorities in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland have executed 21 men convicted of being Al-Shabaab members, the highest number of death row inmates killed in the Horn of Africa nation since the collapse of Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991.
A regional court had earlier sentenced the men to death for attacks targeting regional officials, security forces and employees.
Mudug governor for Puntland administration, Abdiladif Muse Nur, whose brother Ahmed Muse Nur, late regional governor had been killed in a suicide bombing in May 2020, said 18 men were executed in the town of Galkayo on Sunday.
He stressed that his administration had achieved one of its “objectives in cleansing Mudug region of the terrorist militant group Al-Shabaab”.
Two others were killed in the town of Garowe, the region’s administrative capital with another executed in Qardho.
The death row inmates, all of them men were executed by gunshot.
Al-Qaeda-aligned militant group denied the executed prisoners were members of its fighters and accused Puntland administration of “massacring civilians” whose conviction was based on forced confessions, though regional authorities have not immediately commented on the claim.
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