Somalia Executes Soldier for Killing Late Minister Abbas Siraji

By : Zakeriye ahmed Horndiplomat Correspondent

The National Military Court of Somalia executed Ahmed Abdullahi Abdi for killing the late minister of Public Works and Reconstruction, Abbas Abdullahi Siraji, during Prime Minister Hassan Ali Kheyre’s tenure on 03 May 2017.

Former Somalia’s Auditor General Nur Farah’s bodyguard killed the youngest Somalia minister, Abbas Abdullahi Siraji, at a checkpoint near Somalia’s presidential palace of Villa Somalia. He was sentenced to death by the military court in Mogadishu on 03 June 2017, and he was shot this morning at the General Gordan training school in Mogadishu.

The country’s former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamud Siraji and brother of the late minister Abbas Siraji, welcomed the government’s decision to execute Ahmed Abdullahi Abdi by tweeting, “Justice finally prevailed! Million thanks to H.E Hassan Sheikh Mohamud… You did what your predecessor couldn’t do.”

Who was Abbas Siraji?

Abbas Abdullahi Sheikh Siraji was MP in the lower house of the parliament and Somalia’s youngest minister during Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre’s tenure, taking the Public Works and Reconstruction ministry portfolio.

Abbas Siraji was born in the Afmadow district of the Middle Juba region of Somalia in 1984. He grew up in the Dadaab camp in Kenya, where his family fled in 1992 to escape the civil war that broke out in Somalia, and he was from a prominent religious family.

Abbas Siraji finished high school in Dadaab camp in 2005 and started university in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi in 2007, where he earned a bachelor’s degree.

He returned to Somalia in 2011 to take a job with the humanitarian agencies working in Somalia. In November 2016, he was elected to represent Somalia’s Jubaland state city of Kismayo in parliament. In March 2017, Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre appointed Abbas Siraji as the minister of Public Works and Reconstruction and assumed office on 04 April 2017.