     Nin-Yaaban | Monday, January 15, 2001 - 07:48 pm
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Gunmen attacked one of Mogadishu's Islamic courts and released 48 prisoners, including five convicted murderers, a court official said Monday.
The more than 50 gunmen -- some of whom worked for the court -- looted it late Sunday using three pickup trucks mounted with anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, deputy chairman Sheik Ahmed Mohamed Suleman said. The attackers also stole 11 assault rifles and an unknown quantity of ammunition.
No casualties were reported.
Islamic courts have been the only judicial institutions operating in the southern half of the Somali capital since it fell into chaos after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre's 1991 ouster by a loose alliance of opposition leaders. Faction leaders fought each other after Barre was deposed, turning this nation of 7 million people into battling fiefdoms ruled by heavily armed militias.
President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan and a 245-member national assembly were elected at a national reconciliation conference in neighboring Djibouti in August. They returned to Mogadishu in October but have yet to set up a judicial system.
On Sunday, Hassan appointed Sheik Adan Mohamed Ibrahim, a veteran Somali law professor, to head the new civilian Supreme Court. But no government courts are operating yet, and other judges still have to be appointed.
The Islamic courts, the first of which was set up in 1994, have employed their own militias and handed down sentences for everything from vagrancy to murder. They have their own prisons, often just steel shipping containers with a few holes pierced in them to allow prisoners to breath.
Attacks on the courts are rare, and the reason for Sunday's incident was unclear. However, some reports suggested that the courts' security personnel are upset at not being paid -- they only receive food -- while former colleagues who have enrolled in government demobilization camps financed by local businessmen are earning $60 per month.
When the government returned to Mogadishu, it set up the camps with the aim of turning the gunmen into soldiers and policemen. The Islamic courts, which support the new government and legislature, have agreed to allow some of its gunmen to join the camps. |
