Moroccan Islamic State Fighters Sentenced to Death in Somalia

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Moroccan Islamic State Fighters Sentenced to Death in Somalia

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A military court in Somalia has sentenced six Islamic State fighters from Morocco to death. The men will face execution by a firing squad if their appeal, which they have one month to file, is unsuccessful.

“They came to Somalia to support ISIS and destroy and shed blood,” stated Col Ali Ibrahim Osman, the court’s deputy chairman. The men’s lawyer argued that they had been misled into joining IS and were seeking deportation to Morocco.

This marks the first time authorities in the semi-autonomous Puntland region have charged or sentenced foreigners for joining IS. The military court also handed down 10-year prison sentences to an Ethiopian and a Somali, while another Somali defendant was acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

A prosecutor informed Somali that the militants were arrested in the Cal-Miskaat mountains, east of Bosaso, Puntland’s commercial hub. The mountains serve as a stronghold for the Islamic State, which has established a base there.

The Somali branch of IS was established in 2015 by defectors from the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabab group, the largest jihadist group in Somalia. IS in Somalia is known for extorting locals and mainly carries out small-scale, sporadic attacks, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Somalia typically issues the death penalty for terrorism-related crimes, a practice that has been condemned by several local and international human rights groups, including The Coalition of Somali Human Rights Defenders. According to a recent report by the coalition and other rights groups, Somalia carried out at least 55 executions last year, with 23 of them conducted by military authorities in Puntland and Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.