Oct. 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Government of Somalia has announced that it has established a hotline for the country’s citizens to report extortion by the jihadist organization Al Shabaab.
The Executive of Hasan Sheikh Mohamud has indicated that the group cannot be defeated only through the Army, for which he has asked fellow citizens to provide any information they have about the person demanding the extortion.
The authorities have confirmed that callers are not required to give their personal data such as name or address, Garowe Online collects.
“Somalia is committed to changing the mentality of residents through the propagation of positive ideologies so that they participate in the eradication of the threat of the terrorist group,” the aforementioned media collects.
This measure is added to the latest policies announced by Mogadishu by which the jihadist group’s ways of collecting income begin to be blocked. The authorities warned that they will revoke the business licenses of the alleged culprits. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce also warned that it will confiscate the property of companies in which it discovers the participation of members of the organization.
The Hiraal Institute, a group of security experts based in the capital, Mogadishu, discovered two years ago that Al Shabaab collects 11 million euros a month, more than half in the capital, and that in 2021 it has spent almost 25 millions of euros in the purchase of weapons using these companies as a cover.
At the beginning of October, the Somali authorities launched an operation against dozens of Facebook pages and other social networks allegedly related to the group’s propaganda machinery and a few days ago the Army launched a campaign in the Middle Shabelle region that has left up to At the moment thirty dead jihadists.
