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 GAROWE, (insidesomalia.org) - Authorities in the self-governing region of Puntland, in northern Somalia, arrested and handed over to Ethiopian intelligence services ranking officers of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), informed sources confirmed to Garowe Online.
Abdinur Mohamed Soyan and Dhire Oof, both members of the ONLF Central Committee, were arrested by Puntland Intelligence Service (PIS) agents on April 22 at a hotel in Garowe, the capital city of Puntland.
The sources said Mr. Oof, who has been living in Puntland for some time, came to Garowe to visit his wife.
His compatriot, Mr. Soyan, came to Puntland to follow up on the death of a relative inside a jail in the Gulf of Aden port city of Bossaso, the region’s commercial hub.
An independent inquiry by Garowe Online discovered that Mr. Soyan’s relative was wounded earlier this month by PIS agents, who raided his home and arrested him for yet-unspecified reasons.
The wife of Mr. Soyan’s late relative was also wounded during the raid, according to reliable sources in Bossaso.
The relative had been living in Bossaso for 13 years and was employed as a loader of trucks leaving the port of Bossaso and delivering goods to the Ogaden, a Somali-inhabited region in eastern Ethiopia.
Traditional elders in Bossaso were successful in helping release Mr. Soyan’s wounded relative from jail briefly, but the sources said PIS agents raided his home for a second time and placed him back in jail.
It was learned that Mr. Soyan’s wounded relative later died in incarceration from gunshot wounds sustained during the first PIS raid, according to well-placed sources who did not wish to be named in print.
Mr. Soyan reportedly was en route to Bossaso, where he planned to protest against the brutal killing of his late relative and check up on the condition of the victim’s wounded wife and the children he left behind.
According to a Web site statement from the ONLF, both officials arrested by Puntland regional authorities were “unarmed political figures and posed no threat to the security of Puntland.”
The ONLF online statement alleged that the two officials – Mr. Soyan and Mr. Oof – were interrogated by PIS agents in Garowe before being transported in the personal car of Puntland Finance Minister Mohamed “Gaagaab” Ali to the Ethiopian border, where Ethiopian intelligence officers awaited.
But Farah Abdi Dorshe, Puntland’s deputy security minister, categorically rejected the accusations against the region’s Finance Minister, saying that no ONLF officials were handed over to the Ethiopian government by Puntland authorities.
A Puntland government source said Somalis from the Ogaden region who were secretly working with Ethiopian intelligence played a key role in the arrests of the ONLF political officers.
Since the 1990s, the ONLF has been fighting for the self-determination of Somalis in the Ogaden, a region wracked by conflict and poverty and neglected by Addis Ababa for decades.
The Ethiopian government considers the ONLF a terrorist organization.
Source: Garowe Online
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