Ahmed Ismail Ali was yesterday executed on charges of terrorism and murder. Ali was a senior al Shabaab official based in Gedo region of southern Somalia where he planned, executed and facilitated terrorist activities against KDF, AMISOM, government forces, ordinary Somali and Kenyan civilians.
He was captured in the battlefield after he was wounded during a battle between counter-terrorism forces and Al Shabaab terrorists. The allied troops subsequently handed him over to the Somali government which tried him in a military where he was found guilty of killing government officials and sentenced to death.
During his tenure as Al Shabaab leader in Gedo province, he facilitated the planning and execution of the September 2013 Westgate attack in Nairobi where more than 60 people were killed in Kenya’s worst terrorist attack since the August 1998 Al Qaeda bombing of the US embassy. Al Shabaab had assigned him to the terror cell that executed the Westgate attack in order to increase the odds of the success of the attack.
The administrator of Burdubo district, Hassan Mohammed, has confirmed that Ali was a high-ranking terrorist who menaced Gedo region and Somalia as a whole. Counter-terrorism forces are also pursuing a trio of al Shabaab terrorists who killed Ali Matan (Burdubo district’s deputy commissioner) last week.
al Shabaab terrorists who have been captured have always been tried in military courts – which are usually insulated from unnecessary judicial activism – which have passed appropriate sentences thus reducing the military strength of the terror group. The terror group has been suffering a string of defeats since KDF launched operation Linda Nchi to pacify Somalia and defeat al Shabaab.
