A notorious rights violator picked as a member of Somalia's Hirshabelle Parliament

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A notorious rights violator picked as a member of Somalia's Hirshabelle Parliament

JOWHAR (HORN OBSERVER) On Tuesday night, Somalia's Hirshabelle State has announced its second Regional Assembly (Parliament) comprising 90 members from the clans in Hiiraan and Middle Shabelle regions.

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PHOTO of Ali Jibril Kutubi.

JOWHAR (HORN OBSERVER) On Tuesday night, Somalia's Hirshabelle State has announced its second Regional Assembly (Parliament) comprising 90 members from the clans in Hiiraan and Middle Shabelle regions.

The selection process, which was steered by clan elders, has seen a slow and never ending clan disputes. It has now been officially wrapped up with the announcement of the new members of the regional assembly representing the clan power sharing.

However, local and national rights groups have now expressed their concerns that some notorious human rights violators, like Ali Jibril Kutubi, has got his way to be picked as a member of the new Hirshabelle State Assembly.

WHO IS KUTUBI?

Born in Mandhera, Kenya in 1982, the 38-years-old Kutubi has once been recruited by Kenyan anti-terror agencies as an informant and committing atrocities against the residents of Kenya's Northeastern regions, before he left to Khartoum, Sudan where he was admitted at the International University of Africa in 2016, according to a confidential file seen by the Horn Observer.

After completing his education in Sudan, Kutubi had already become on the Kenyan security agencies' radar due to his alleged connection to Mohamed Kuno (alias Dulyadeyn), who has been identified as the plotter of the 2015 Garissa University Attack and was subsequently arrested in Nairobi.

After the Garissa attack, Kenya's government put up a $215,000 reward for Kuno's capture. In June 2016, Jubbaland forces in Somalia said Kuno was one of 16 people killed in an overnight raid on a convoy in Kismayo, a port city in southern Somalia.

When he was released, Kutubi managed to flee to Somalia where he had a good network of friends including Fahad Yasin Dahir who was then Villa Somalia chief of staff and now Director of Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). The connection between Fahad Yasin and Kutubi started during Kutubi's era with Al-Jazeera Arabic TV where Kutubi was frequently interviewed as an influential Somalia analyst.

RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN SOMALIA

Taking advantage of his close relationship with Fahad Yassin, who later became NISA commander, Mr. Kutubti gained an incredible access to NISA headquarters resulting to his promotion as the rank of a mid-level NISA officer. His job was to monitor and detect journalists and media outlets critical of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo's administration.

"He was one of a small number of intelligence officers trained by the Government of Qatar, and began working in the social media monitoring unit of NISA. He has played a key role in recruiting journalists for Somali intelligence to spy on critics of the government," one current NISA officer in Banadir region, who asked anonymity due to safety concerns, told the Horn Observer.

It was at this time that Kutubi stepped up his operations against Somali journalists, spearheading a series of arrests of journalists and attacks on local media outlets through an information he gathered on the journalists.

Since February 2017, 10 journalists have been killed in Somalia, according to Amnesty International, and dozen others have been injured making the country world’s worst place for the fifth year in a row when it comes to failing to prosecute journalist murderers. To date, no one has investigated these serious violations of press freedom in Somalia, let alone to prosecuting its perpetrators.

"Kutubi's presence in the HirShabelle parliament is not only a violation of the rights of those oppressed, but also a major embarrassment for the Somali government and the international community, which supports Somalia's state rebuilding," said Hassan Abdirahman, the rights advocacy officer at FEHRN, a national body that defends the Free Expression and Human Rights in Somalia.

After this article was published, Jibril Kutubi contacted Horn Obsever and denied all the allegations mentioned in this article.

By Zakaria Mohamud Tima Ade