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As Assassins Target Somali Journalists, Fear Is a Daily Event
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In the end, he decided to report it.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]"Since I have chosen this profession, I have decided to tell the truth to the wider society," he said. "So, I trust God and say the truth."
If it gets to the point where he feels he cannot, he said, he will leave.
Many Somali journalists have already reached that point, and those with the means have left. At least a dozen Somali journalists have joined an estimated 450,000 residents who have fled the seaside capital this year, including 90,000 who abandoned the city following intense fighting in the past week.
Sahal Abdulle, a reporter for the Reuters news agency, left two months ago.
He had been detained at least once by Ethiopian troops who held an AK-47 to his head. His house, where he spent hours gardening to distract himself from the sounds of mortars and bombs, had been searched by Somali government troops.
During the last weeks he was there, he said, he would often slow his pace as he walked the streets, to see if anyone behind him slowed down, too. If anyone did, he said, he would change his route.
Then in August, his friend Elmi was killed. Abdulle went to the funeral and was in the car with Sharmarke when a remotely detonated bomb exploded, throwing the car into the air.
Abdulle's throat was slashed by shrapnel, but he managed to escape. Shortly afterward, he left the country.
"I feel frustrated because this is a job that I love," he said by phone from Toronto, where he is living. "It feels like someone forced me at gunpoint -- and with a bomb, in my case -- to leave."
