Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, the director of somalia's privately-owned Universal TV has been released by his captors. Four armed and hooded men abducted the journalist five days earlier on the road between Afgoye and Mogadishu.
The Djibouti-based independent Somali news agency SOMINA reported that that Ali, also known as “Jeckey,” was abducted by four masked gunmen who stopped his car as he was returning to Mogadishu from Afgoye in the afternoon. The gunmen said they had been looking for Ali and did not abduct the technician, Abdirisak Mohamud Jimale, who was accompanying him.
Canadian reporter Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were abducted in similar circumstances on August 23, 2008. Their Somali fixer and driver were also abducted but were freed on January 15. Lindhout and Brennan are still being held hostage in Mogadishu.
Abductions of journalists and humanitarian aid workers have become quite common in Somalia, which is the deadliest country in Africa for the news media and is ranked 153rd out of 173 countries in the 2008 RSF press freedom index.
