Reporters Assassinated in Somalia as Report Documents Widespread War Crimes

Amidst continuing violence in Somalia the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch is accusing the US-backed Ethiopian government, the transitional Somali government it brought to power, as well as insurgent groups of committing war crimes in the capital city of Mogadishu. The report was released Monday, just as the UN Security Council began deliberations over sending a peacekeeping force to Somalia. It documents the indiscriminate bombing, shooting, and summary executions that took place at the height of the violence and caused hundreds of deaths and over 400,000 people to be displaced.

The armed conflict in Somalia has escalated since the Ethiopian government and US forces ousted the Union of Islamic Courts last December and helped install the Somali Transitional Federal Government in January of this year. Insurgent groups began attacking Ethiopian troops and the transitional government. Ethiopian forces responded with two major bombing raids in March and April of this year that Human Rights Watch estimates could have killed up to 1,300 civilians.

The space for dissent and independent voices has been severely curtailed in this period. On Saturday two prominent radio journalists were assassinated in Mogadishu. They were leading figures at the independent broadcaster HornAfrik that has been critical of both the Islamists and the pro-US interim government. In April of this year HornAfrik's studios were destroyed by shelling from Ethiopian forces.

• Steve Crawshaw, UN Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch.
• Said Sheikh Samatar, professor of African history at Rutgers University with a specialty in Somalia. He is also executive director of the independent journal Horn of Africa and author of numerous books including "Somalia: a Nation in Turmoil."

Mahed Ahmed Elmi was one of the two HornAfrik journalists killed this weekend. Elmi was the director of Capital Voice radio, a private station owned by HornAfrik media and also worked as a freelance reporter for McClatchy newspapers. He was shot four times in the head on his way to work on Saturday morning.

We are now joined on the phone from Nairobi by Shashank Bengali, the Nairobi Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers. He worked with Mahed Ahmed Elmi.

• Shashank Bengali, the Nairobi Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers.

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