Thursday September 2, 2021
MOGADISHU (HOL) - Somalia's national intelligence agency has said one of its female agents who went missing on June 26 was kidnapped and killed by the militant group Al-Shabaab.
Sources privy to the developments said the National Intelligence and Security Agency informed the family that Ikran Tahlil Farah, who was the head of the agency's cyber security department, had fallen into the hands of Al-Shabaab.
However, the revelation is likely to raise more questions and put NISA in the spotlight over how it handled the matter. Since Ikran went missing on June 26, NISA has kept mum over the issue, leaving the family and the nation in the dark. Her mother, Qali Mohamud Guhad, pleaded with Prime Minister Mohamed Roble on August 30 to come forth on her daughter's whereabouts.
Qali said she approached NISA boss Fahad Yasin shortly after the disappearance of Ikran, and he promised he would update the family on the matter but has since got quiet." I spoke with Fahad Yasin shortly after her disappearance, and he assured me that I would receive an update on my daughter's whereabouts within two days. That was over a month and a half ago," Qali said.
Qali also said Hormud Telcom, the country's largest telecom provider, 'declined' to share information about the last number which appeared on Ikran's phone.
Attorney General Suleiman Mohamud announced on July 27 that he was putting in place a probe team to investigate the whereabouts of Ikran. Still, like NISA, the AGs office has not commented on the issue since then.
Sources said the vehicle which Ikran boarded on the evening of June 26 was familiar to her. A CCTV video was released shortly after she went missing that to showed the vehicle stop in front of Ikran as walks out of her home in Mogadishu. She willingly entered the backseat of the car before it drives out of frame.