JEDDAH, 19 December 2003 — The UN Security Council has asked that a group of experts be set up to make recommendations on tightening the arms embargo against Somalia, the UN Media Center said on Wednesday.
In a resolution, the council called for the monitoring group to investigate breaches of the embargo - especially transfers of ammunition, single use weapons and small arms - by land, air and sea.
The group would be consisted of up to four experts with a six-month mandate. The Security Council wants the Nairobi-based monitoring panel, after carrying out work in Somalia and neighboring states, to make specific recommendations about how to strengthen the embargo.
According to the resolution, the experts will also compile a draft list of those who continue to violate the arms embargo inside and outside Somalia, and their active supporters, for possible future measures by the UN Council.
A UN mission visited one month ago to explore ways of giving full effect to the embargo. In 1992, the UN banned the supply of arms in Somalia in a bid to restore peace to the war-torn country.
A previous panel of experts, also set up at the request of the Council, found last year that the repeated embargo breaches are undermining attempts to restore peace and stability to the country.
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On Tuesday, the Star Tribune newspaper reported that Omar Jamal, an executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, told the Somali community in the United States that Al-Qaeda suspect Muhammad A. Warsame was being treated well in the Hennepin County jail.
Jamal attended three gatherings in Minneapolis to address Somali community concerns after the arrest of Warsame in Minneapolis last week.
Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent, is a college student suspected of associating with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. “No, he is not being tortured.
He is in good condition. He is being treated well,” Jamal told more than 40 people in attendance, adding that Warsame’s wife, Fartun Farah, visited him for an hour Sunday at his jail cell.
Somalis said that there was more surprise than worry in their community. According to reports, after Sept. 11, there was a temporary closure of several money-wiring businesses in the United States that many Somalis used to send funds to impoverished family members in Somalia.
Last year, Minneapolis police shot and killed a mentally ill Somali man wielding a machete on the street.
“People are very concerned. People are concerned for him, but it’s not the same intensity as when the money-wiring businesses were closed or when Abu Kassim Jeilani was shot and killed,” Saeed Fahia, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Community of Minnesota, was quoted as saying.
Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States. Warsame is apparently the first Somali to be jailed there in connection with the FBI’s post-Sept. 11 investigations.
A former Somali prime minister, Ali Khalif Galaydh, who is now a public policy professor at the University of Minnesota, said that he didn’t think local Somalis were being specifically targeted.
“The average Somali is flabbergasted that another Somali would find himself in that crowd,” he said. “That is my impression from those I have talked to. The first question I get is, ‘Do you know him (Warsame)?’ I don’t know the guy, and I haven’t met any people who know him,” Galaydh said.
