November 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The US government has announced that it is doubling the rewards offered for information on Al Shabaab leader Ahmed Diriye and two other senior members of the Somali terrorist group, according to a State Department Rewards for Justice statement.
The statement includes that it offers ten million dollars (a similar figure in euros) for “information that leads to the identification or location of the senior officials of Al Shabaab Ahmed Diriye, Mahad Karate and Jehad Mostafa.”
Thus, it has highlighted that it is also offering this same amount for “information that leads to the alteration of the financial mechanisms of Al Shabaab”, which is the first time that Washington has offered rewards for information on the financial networks of the terrorist group.
The United States has highlighted that Al Shabaab “is the main affiliate of Al Qaeda in East Africa and has recalled that” it is responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in Somalia, Kenya and neighboring countries that have killed thousands of people, including US citizens.
The North American country designated Al Shabaab as a terrorist organization in 2008, while Diriye was included in the terrorist list in April 2015, after ascending to the leadership of the group in September 2014 following the death of Ahmed Godane.
For his part, Karate, considered ‘number two’ in Diriye, was appointed by the United States in 2015. The man is considered one of those responsible for the Intelligence and security wing of Al Shabaab, in charge of supervising suicide attacks and assassinations in Somalia and other countries on the continent.
Mostafa is a US citizen who lived in California and works as a military instructor in Al Shabaab training camps. He is also an important figure in the group’s communication and propaganda network and performs “go-between” tasks with other terrorist organizations.
Somalia has increased offensives against Al Shabaab in recent months and has even banned the name of the group to refer to the organization, which maintains ties to Al Qaeda. Thus, he has demanded that he be mentioned as ‘jauarij’, a word that means “deviant sect”.
The offensives against Al Shabaab, which have the support of clans and local militias, are part of a series of decisions taken by the new president, Hasan Sheikh Mohamud, who promised upon taking office to put the fight against terrorism at the center of his efforts to stabilize the African country.
