Italian police have arrested a Somali man accused of raping and torturing asylum seekers fleeing Libya on a boat which sank off the island of Lampedusa last month killing more than 365 migrants. Mouhamud Elmi Muhidin, 34, faces charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, people trafficking and criminal association with the goal of aiding illegal immigration...
March 14, 2025
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Italy arrests Somali man over Lampedusa shipwreck tragedy
ROME // Italian police have arrested a 24-year-old Somali man accused of being a trafficker involved with the migrant boat that sank last month in a tragedy that claimed 366 lives, a spokeswoman said on Friday. The man was arrested on the island of Lampedusa where the shipwreck took place and “was one of the...
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Where pirates stash their booty
By: Leslie Shaffer Somali pirates have a problem Captain Hook never faced: how to invest millions worth of ransom payments. Like many a corporate raider, Somalia’s pirate financiers often look to create a vertically integrated, diversified business, according to the “Pirate Trails” study by the World Bank, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime...
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Global economy hit with annual bill $18 billion in fighting pirates
The ongoing battle with Somali pirates and their plundering peers off the Horn of Africa is costing the global economy $18 billion a year. A new World Bank and United Nations report entitled ‘Pirate Trails, the International Criminal Police Organisation’ reveals the war on piracy leaves the world with the whopping annual bill as navies...
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Piracy ransoms amount to more than $339 million over seven-year period – UN report
Pirates off the coast of Somalia and the Horn of Africa have made between $339 million and $413 million in ransom profits, fuelling a wide range of criminal activities on a global scale, according to a United Nations-backed report released today. Pirate Trails, produced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World...
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Missing Norwegian girls being ‘held’ in Syria
Two Norwegian girls of Somali origin are believed to be held captive in Syria after travelling to the country to support rebels there, their father said in a report Thursday by Norway’s public broadcaster NRK. “They are held against their will,” the man, who was not identified by NRK, said in an interview recorded late Wednesday in...
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Tensions build as Minneapolis election nears
By: MAYA RAO and ERIC ROPER A public housing forum Thursday was largely tame until Mark Andrew shot back at Cam Winton’s answer to a question about creating programs specifically aimed at Somali ex-convicts — one of the first times Andrew has jabbed back at Winton, a frequent critic. Winton had said he believed in “colorblind ladders of...
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Here Comes Khaatumo 3 Conference, Long Live Somali Unity
By Osman Hassan Khaatumo State of Somalia was born in January 2012 in the famous town Taleex, the citadel of the Darwiish movement, in a hostile environment where its enemies, Somaliland and Puntland, were united by their common desire to abort its birth right from its inception and derail its development ever since . It...
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How the US raid on al-Shabaab in Somalia went wrong
Abdalle Ahmed in Mogadishu, Spencer Ackerman in Washington and David Smith in Johannesburg As a mother of young children, Fadumo Sheikh is used to rising early. Last Saturday she was due to prepare their breakfasts before they went to the local madrasa. But the day started earlier than ever when, at around 2am, she was...
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Norway’s Somalis Worry Extremism Is Spreading
By Karl Ritter Somali immigrants in Norway fear that violent extremism is taking root in the community after reports of young Somali-Norwegians travelling abroad to join jihadist groups. One of the gunmen in the Nairobi, Kenya, mall attack that killed 67 people last month has been identified as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Norwegian citizen...