04 May 2010
Sheik Mohamed Abkey
Shooting
Gunmen killed a Somali journalist working for the country's state-run radio station after abducting him on his way back home from work in Mogadishu.
According to his co-workers, Sheik Mohamed Abkey was kidnapped earlier on Tuesday. "He came to work as usual this morning and left to see his family when gunmen took him, torturing him before they shot him dead," AFP quoted the station's political correspondent Abdolaziz Mohamed Guled as saying. His colleagues linked the killing of Abkey to Radio Mogadishu's critical views of insurgents. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. Gunmen abandoned Abkey's mutilated body in a Mogadishu street, eyewitnesses said.
Abkey joined the Somali News Agency -- SONA -- in the 1970s. During years of civil war in the country he also worked for the Somali Television Network based in Mogadishu, where he was a news anchor and comedian. More recently, he worked with Somalia's Information Ministry.
