Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

On 14 April 2013, two prominent human rights lawyers, Mohamed Mahmoud Afrah and Abdikarin Hussein Gorod, were killed when they were in the wrong place at the wrong time: Al-Shabaab adherents in army uniform stormed Somalia’s main court complex in Mogadishu. They were among the approximately thirty people killed in the suicide attack.

Both Mohamed Mahmoud Afrah and Abdikarin Hussein Gorod have worked for a Legal Aid programme funded by the UN Development Programme in Mogadishu and had previously assisted internally displaced persons and other vulnerable individuals. They had recently defended Abdiasis Abdinur Ibrahim, also known as Koronto, a journalist who was jailed for interviewing an internally displaced woman who said she had been raped by state security forces in Mogadishu. A case referred to in this blog and by Front Line Defenders http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/21570

Related articles

• Tributes paid to Somali human rights lawyers killed in al-Shabaab attack (guardian.co.uk)

This entry was posted on April 16, 2013 at 19:25 and is filed under human rights.

Tags: Abdikarin Hussein Gorod, Al-Shabaab, Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Defenders, human rights lawyers, killings, Koronto, legal aid, Mogadishu, Mohamed Mahmoud Afrah, Somalia, suicide bombers, terrorism, UNDP