- Six members of a terrorist group who are serving long sentences and death sentences today tried to escape from a maximum-security jail in the capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, Hargeisa. The terrorists have been sentenced for killing several foreign aid workers in Somaliland and are said to belong to an Al Qaeda cell.
Sources close to the Somaliland government today told the independent Internet journal 'Awdalnews Network', that members of the five-terrorist cell - including Abdirahman Indho-Ade, one of the most dangerous and most wanted terrorists in the Horn of Africa - jumped the prison fence at about 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening, Somaliland time.
The government source added that the police have re-arrested all of them and including Mr Indho-Ade, who was wounded while trying to resist his arrest. All the terrorists thus are being taken back to the Hargeisa prison facilities.
The terrorist cell is behind several murders and attempts to destabilise peaceful Somaliland. A Somaliland court in November 2005 had sentenced eight men to death for killing several aid workers between 2003 and 2004. Two British teachers, Richard Eyeington and his wife, Enid, were shot dead in October 2003 at their home in a former British built Secondary school in Sheikh town.
The murder of the Eyeingtons came just two weeks after the murder of an Italian hospital humanitarian worker, Annalena Tonelli, who ran a tuberculosis hospital in Borama town, some 100 kilometres west of Hargeisa.
Three suspects - Mohamed Ali, Ahmed Samatar and Ibrahim Ali - were convicted of killing the Eyeingtons during the 2005 court hearing. Another five suspects - Jamaa Abdi, Ali Muse, Daud Salah, Ali Muhamed and Farhan Abdilahi - were also convicted of killing Florence Chepkemei, a Kenyan employee of the German aid agency GTZ, and another colleague in March 2004.
The killers were put in connection with the international terrorist network of Al Qaeda during the court hearings. It was found that their main objective had been to destabilise Somaliland, an oasis of peace and security in an otherwise unstable region. Temporarily, the terrorists succeeded in reducing the presence of international aid workers in Somaliland.
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