NAIROBI: Two French security advisers being held hostage in Somalia will soon be tried under Shariah for alleged spying and “conspiracy against Islam,” a senior member of a group holding the men said Saturday.
The official with the Al-Shabab group said no date had been set for the trial.
The French men were abducted Tuesday from a hotel in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. They were in the country to train Somali government forces, which are fighting Al-Shabab.
Meanwhile, a security official said gunmen seized three foreign aid workers in northern Kenya and took them across the border into Somalia. Roughly 10 gunmen arrived late Friday night at a house in the border town of Mandera where the workers were staying, shot the watchman in the head and kidnapped the three workers, the official said.
He would not say who the victims worked for or what their nationalities are. The watchman was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, the official said.
Somalia has not had a functioning government for 18 years since clan warlords overthrew a brutal socialist dictator then unleashed their militias on each other.
Kidnappings for ransom have been on the rise in recent years, with journalists and aid workers often targeted. The lawlessness also has allowed piracy to flourish off the coast, making the waterway one of the most dangerous in the world. On Saturday, pirates said they had released a German ship and its crew after being paid a ransom of $1.8 million. In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry identified the ship as the MV Victoria, which was captured May 5 with 11 men on board.
