Somalia offers $50,000 reward for information on journalist killers
Somali people carry the body of journalist Abdisatar Dahir who was killed in a double suicide attack in a restaurant in Mogadishu. According to the International Press Institute, 16 journalists have been killed this year in Somalia, 119 total worldwide, the highest number since the 1990s.
Somalia has offered a $50,000 reward for information that would lead to the convictions of those killing journalists.
Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon said he announced the reward in order to help ensure these killers would be brought to justice, reported the Associated Press.
"One journalist killed is one journalist too many," Shirdon said on his Twitter account, according to Agence France-Presse. "Judicial reform is at the heart of the government's efforts to ensure killers of journalists are brought to justice."
Somalia's journalist union chief Mohamed Ibrahim also welcomed the "pledge for justice for slain Somali journalists."
More from GlobalPost: 16th Somali journalist killed this year
AFP noted that at least 18 journalists were killed in Somalia last year, which is double the country's worst year on record and second only to Syria. None of the killers have been brought to justice.
According to the AP, one reporter has been killed so far this year, bringing the number of journalists killed in Somalia since 2007 to 45.
Somali journalists have recently been the targets of a string of assassinations and bomb attacks being blamed on the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shebaab. Other killings are said to be linked to power struggles within the country's multiple factions.
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