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TEHRAN, Jan 2 - Somalia's government has ordered the United Nations envoy to the country to leave, amid questions over the arrest of the al-Shabab extremist group's former deputy leader who had run for a regional presidency.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - A foreign ministry statement late Tuesday accuses Nicholas Haysom of diplomatic overreach that violated the Horn of Africa nation's sovereignty, declaring him "persona non grata." He arrived as envoy a few months ago.
Haysom had questioned the legal basis used in the arrest last month of Mukhtar Robow, a former al-Shabab spokesman who defected from the group in 2017, and whether U.N.-funded regional police in the Southwest were involved.
Ethiopian troops who are part of the African Union force in Somalia and Somali police arrested Robow days before the regional election in which Robow had been a leading candidate. Deadly protests followed. Ethiopia has not commented.
Robow was flown to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and has been held in a prison run by Somalia's intelligence agency.
A U.N. spokesman said they were not commenting now, and Haysom did not immediately respond. Instead, Haysom and the spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general late Tuesday issued statements strongly condemning a mortar attack that hit the main U.N. compound in Mogadishu earlier in the day. Seven mortars landed inside the compound, leaving two U.N. staffers and a contractor with non-life-threatening injuries, Haysom's statement said. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility.
Robow's arrest has been seen as a high-profile test of Somalia's treatment of defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, Africa's most active extremist group. Somalia's government welcomed his defection but not his popular candidacy to lead Southwest state, which took some officials by surprise.
In confirming Robow's arrest, Somalia's security ministry cited the federal government's ban on his candidacy, which said he had not completed the defection process. The ministry also alleged that Robow had failed to renounce extremist ideology, and accused him of mobilizing armed forces.
Source: AP
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