Goobjoog Journalist Gurbiye arrested on orders from Office of the President
Goobjoog Media Group Editor was arrested Tuesday morning on the orders of the Office of President Mohamed Farmaajo, Goobjoog News can authoritatively reveal.
Impeccable sources in the office of the Attorney General and Security Authorities have intimated to Goobjoog News that the order to arrest Gurbiye, who is also Goobjoog Media Group (GMG) Deputy Director, came from Villa Somalia.
Gurbiye was informed Tuesday morning he was under arrest following a warrant from the Office of the Attorney General. Goobjoog News has since established the AG was acting at the behest of the Office of the President.
The arrest which has been roundly condemned by media unions and professional groups locally and internationally adds to a series of intimidations, threats, coercion and attempted bribes on GMG journalists and journalists from independent media houses in the country.
SUSTAINED PRESSURE
In the last three years, Goobjoog Media Group, which has remained independent and professional has come under intense pressure from Villa Somalia and other offices in the Federal Government and security agencies. The pressure has either been through direct threats, intimidations, bribes and poaching of journalists with the sole intend of silencing them.
Various journalists within the GMG fraternity have been threatened to drop stories perceived by Villa Somalia and it surrogates to be critical of their conduct while some have even been offered jobs with a higher pay by government functionaries to co-opt them into the system and end dissent.
As attested to by the recent Amnesty International Report, “Journalists were beaten, harassed, threatened, subjected to arbitrary arrests and intimidation by the authorities, including the police, military and other government officials throughout south central Somalia and other areas.”
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Arrest of Goobjoog Editor ‘illegal and coordinated state campaign’-GMG
It is therefore not lost on GMG that the Office of the President and other arms of the Executive have been pursuing a campaign aimed at crippling GMG operations. The onslaught has not only been in the newsroom but also the commercial wing of the company which has suffered immense loss of business owing to interventions of the State.
The directive by the Minister of Sports Khadijo Diriye last August banning GMG from covering sports events countrywide and subsequent enforcement of the same by the Somali Football Federation adds to a choreographed attempt by the Office of the President and the Prime Minister to sabotage GMG’s operations by all means at their disposal.
GMG will however robustly defend itself within the framework of the law and the Constitution and urges the Office of the President and the Executive to confine themselves within the bounds of the law and be accountable to the public in a democratic manner and not with terror, coercion and intimidation.