Killers of BBC journo living openly in Somalia

The investigation into the murder of BBC producer Kate Peyton in Mogadishu a year ago has lead nowhere and her killers live openly in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. "Peyton's murderers enjoy complete impunity in Mogadishu," Reporters Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said in a statement issued together with the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) to mark the anniversary of the killing.

ALL HUSH HUSH: Somalian transitional government president Abdullahai Yusuf Ahmed (L) confers with the parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan. The leaders of Somalia's deeply split transitional government have announced that the lawless country's parliament will meet for the first time on Somali soil in the town of Baidoa next month after weeks of haggling and intense international pressure.(AFP/Simon Maina)

"We urge the judicial authorities to carry out a proper investigation and arrest the killers and we share the dismay of Peyton’s family and colleagues at seeing them go scot-free for the past year," the two organisations said.

The killers live openly in Mogadishu. They belong to a well-known clan that turns to an Islamic court to settle judicial issues. But their justice appears not to be operative when the victim is someone from outside the clan. "The government, which condemned this �act of savagery’ and offered a reward for information leading to the capture of Peyton’s killers, should ensure that justice is done quickly," the two organisations urged.

Usually based in Johannesburg, Peyton, 39, was hit in the back by a pistol shot fired by men in a car on February 9, 2005 outside the Sahafi International Hotel in Mogadishu, where she and other foreign reporters were accompanying a group of Somali parliamentarians who were supposed to pave the way for the transitional government’s arrival in Somalia two weeks later.

Peyton had gone to the Sahafi International Hotel to meet parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, who – since his installation on August 29, 2004 – had been chairing parliamentary sessions in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi because Somalia is so dangerous. After being shot, Peyton was taken to Mogadishu’s Medina hospital, where she died a few hours later before she could be evacuated to Nairobi.

She had spent the last 10 years in Africa and had worked for the BBC as a reporter and producer since 1993. At least eight foreign journalists have been killed covering Somalia since the overthrow of Mohammed Siad Barre's government in 1991. Peyton's murder was the first killing of a foreign journalist in Somalia in several years.

Lawlessness has continued to plague Mogadishu despite the formation in 2004 of the Somali Transitional Federal Government in neighbouring Kenya. It is Somalia's 14th attempt to form a functioning government in the past 15 years.