A military court in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu has sentenced an ISIS operative who was convicted of being ISIS tax collector to 15 years in jail.
According to the court statement, Warsame Hassan Abdi joined the militant group in 2020 and worked in the mountain areas of the Bari region. He was arrested by the security forces in October 2022 while he was involved in extortion. The convict has a month to appeal against the sentence.
ISIS was formed in 2015 by former fighters of al-Shabaab, who deserted the group following disagreement with the top leaders of Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate group, which mainly operates in south and central Somalia.
The group leader and founder Abdulkadir Mumin, also a former Al-Shabaab cleric pledged his allegiance to the then IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015.
In 2016, the U.S. State Department designated Mumin, a former preacher based in the UK as a global terrorist.
The group has its headquarters in Galgala mountains in Bari region but has made headways into southern Somalia.
