Journalism in Somalia: booming but beset by dangers

My second article for African Arguments was published today:

Journalism in Somalia: booming but beset by dangers

MOGADISHU— Mohamed Abdi Warsame’s hand shakes as he places it on my knee. “Some say my brother was killed over a woman,” he says. “That’s not true. He was killed for the sake of the truth.”

After the evening prayer on October 21, 2012, Mohamed’s brother, a local journalist named Yusuf Warsame, was leaving a mosque in Mogadishu’s Medina neighborhood. As he made his way to a pharmacy to find relief for an earache, two pistol-wielding men stepped out of a doorway and shot him multiple times in the back.

Mohamed was turning a corner onto the same street when the shots rang out; close enough to witness the gunmen fleeing the scene.

“I saw them with my own eyes,” he says. “But I was too far away to gaze on their faces.”

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You can read the full article here.