Inside the Shadows: Incommunicado Detention and Neglect in Somalia’s Detention Network
Disclosure: I chair the Organization for Prisoners’ Rights (OPR), whose reports I cite below.
On the night of 30 June 2026, three armed officers of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) abducted journalist Mascuud Warsame outside his office in Mogadishu, according to the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS). He was released on 8 August without charge and, SJS says, without ever being brought before a judge. SJS counts 39 days in custody. The Committee to Protect Journalists counts 38, and describes the start differently: it says he was asked by phone to help recover a hacked Southwest State Facebook page and was then driven to a NISA office by two plainclothes officers.
What happened in between is a well-documented recent example of detention outside legal safeguards. This article sets out what published sources and OPR’s field research show, from NISA cells to federal prisons, and where the record stops.
By Warsame’s account to SJS, he was held overnight at a police station in Hodan district without food or water. Salah Abdi Nur, known as Moalin Salah, the NISA commander in charge of Southwest State, interrogated him in his cell for most of the night, depriving him of sleep. CPJ, citing Warsame, describes the first night differently: at a NISA office in Hodan district, guarded by two armed men, with questioning by an investigator the next afternoon. CPJ reports that Salah told him he would be detained while his phone was examined. CPJ says it received no response to its requests for comment from Salah, the Southwest State presidency or NISA.
He was then moved to a facility near Mogadishu port, which he calls “Godka Jilaow 2.” Security sources told SJS it is one of NISA’s largest detention facilities, used mainly for suspected Al-Shabaab militants. CPJ says he was transferred on 1 July to a NISA facility near Mogadishu Central Prison. Warsame describes a dark, hot cell shared with other inmates. CPJ’s account says the lights were kept on most of the night and that he feared attack by other inmates, many of them suspected militants. The two accounts differ on where the facility is and on lighting, and agree that he was not alone.
He was allowed to speak to his wife twice. An officer told him not to reveal his situation or where he was held, and to say only that he was fine and would come home. He collapsed twice and was taken to a doctor under armed guard. After his release he was diagnosed with malaria and allergic conditions. Interrogators asked about his criticism of Southwest State’s new leader and cited two Xogbile reports, from 1 May and 2 June 2026. SJS says he was denied regular access to family and legal representation.
What the case documents, on Warsame’s own account, is arbitrary detention, restricted family contact and interrogation over journalism, with broken sleep and poor conditions. It does not document solitary confinement in the Mandela Rules’ sense, because Warsame shared his cell.
The Provisional Constitution bans illegal detention and torture (Article 15(2)) and requires that an arrested person be brought before a court within 48 hours (Article 35(5)), according to the UN’s 2024 prison assessment. The same assessment says the Constitution does not define torture and that, without specific anti-torture legislation, judicial authorities do not punish acts that could be classified as torture. It also says Somalia is a party to the Convention against Torture.
NISA’s powers are disputed. HRW said in February 2023 that a draft law passed by the Senate would give NISA sweeping powers of arrest, detention and surveillance with minimal independent oversight, and that NISA had already arbitrarily detained perceived opponents and journalists. The president signed the NISA Act in March 2023, according to the International IDEA. The State Department describes a March 2023 law as giving NISA power to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, with warrants required unless suspects are caught in the act. I could not read the enacted text. The UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism said in a May 2025 end-of-mission statement that the 2023 Act brings NISA within a legal framework and commits it to respect constitutional rights and treaties, and that best practice is for intelligence agencies not to run their own detention facilities. SJS says NISA is not a lawful arresting authority.
International standards are clearer. The Nelson Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact, and prolonged solitary as more than 15 consecutive days (Rule 44). Rule 43 prohibits indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement, a dark or constantly lit cell, and cutting a prisoner’s food or drinking water as sanctions. The Rules are a UN standard, not a treaty.
Under Siad Barre, the underground prison known as Godka held prisoners in underground cells in permanent solitary confinement, according to Amnesty International reports as summarised in a US immigration document, and mostly in cells too small to stand up straight, according to another Amnesty report as summarised by US Citizenship and Immigration Services. In December 2018 the presidency’s communications director announced that Godka Jilacow would become a training facility for NISA officers, with human rights a core part of the training. The site was still functioning as a NISA-run prison when it was attacked on 4 October 2025 (Hiiraan Online). Accounts differ on whether any prisoners got out: Hiiraan reported on the day that several escaped, and the Long War Journal later reported that some were briefly freed, though Somali officials said all were quickly recaptured.
The Nation reported in July 2011 that an underground prison in the basement of the intelligence headquarters, in the building once used by Barre’s National Security Service, was in use again. It said the prison was officially run by Somali intelligence, but that US intelligence personnel paid agents’ salaries and directly interrogated prisoners, citing senior Somali intelligence officials and former prisoners. It also reported a CIA-run compound at Mogadishu airport and cash payments of about US$200 a month to Somali agents. That reporting is 15 years old. I found no published source documenting current foreign funding or foreign interrogations at Godka Jilacow.
HRW’s 2018 report covers abuses against boys held by NISA since 2015, based on interviews with the boys, relatives, lawyers and officials. It says detainees at NISA’s Mogadishu facilities were taken out of their cells only to use the toilet or for questioning, ate in their cells, and sometimes had toilet access restricted; one boy said guards twice refused to let him go to the toilet while he had diarrhoea at Godka Jilacow. A 16-year-old held for several months at Godka Jilacow in 2016 said he was taken from his cell at night and pressured to confess, then beaten with what felt like a metal stick, and bled for two weeks untreated. The father of another 16-year-old said NISA held his son for 10 days in a house before moving him to Godka Jilacow. A mother said her 16-year-old was held incommunicado at Barista Hisbiga for two months in 2015 and could not walk when she found him at Mogadishu Central Prison. One boy’s parents paid US$2,500 through a facilitator to secure his release after two months.
HRW said it received allegations of ongoing mistreatment in NISA detention and found no evidence of action to investigate past allegations of abuse. The State Department’s 2022, 2023 and 2024 reports say NISA and Puntland’s intelligence agency reportedly threatened and beat detainees and forced them to confess (the 2022 report attributes this to HRW).
OPR’s 2025 annual assessment says Godka Jilacow has reportedly become an interrogation center for NISA, holding suspected Al-Shabaab fighters and political opponents, with underground cells. It also says NISA operates detention sites in houses in Mogadishu, which OPR has been unable to investigate because of the agency’s lack of cooperation in disclosing information.
NISA officer Ikran Tahlil Farah disappeared on 26 June 2021 near the agency’s Mogadishu headquarters. NISA said Al-Shabaab had abducted and killed her. Al-Shabaab denied it. Government investigators said in November 2021 they had found no evidence linking NISA to her disappearance. Her parents rejected that finding, and no body had been found by then (VOA).
In federal prisons, the harm comes mostly from neglect and misuse. The UN found severe overcrowding in three of six prisons inspected in 2022, widespread mental health concerns among detainees, and tuberculosis, cholera and diarrhoea. OPR’s February 2026 report found mental illness severely neglected, and estimates that about a third of inmates were held for family-related “rehabilitation,” alongside violent offenders and alleged Al-Shabaab members, in some cells with more than 50 people. The State Department’s 2023 report says inmates without family or clan support had very limited access to health services.
OPR’s annual assessments of Mogadishu facilities describe a paid-for prison economy. The 2023 report quoted an inmate saying prisoners are forced to buy food expensively from restaurants inside the prison, owned by some high-ranking officers, with a small serving of rice costing about US$1. It quoted others describing charges for drinking water, and ICRC-donated dates and powdered milk that prisoners were told they had to pay for. A staff member told OPR he runs a restaurant inside and that families may not bring food. The reports for 2023, 2024 and 2025 also say families pay US$20 per visit and inmates US$5 for ten minutes outside their cells.
The same reports say prisoners who refuse to buy food from these restaurants are punished with solitary confinement: held undressed for up to five days without food or water, in a room filled with oil drained from vehicles, and beaten before being returned to their cells. The 2023 report, where the claim first appears, adds that they are allowed only a few minutes of sun. OPR says it learned this but does not say from whom, and none of the reports gives dates, a count of cases, or the facility. The 2025 report, dated December 2025, repeats the claim without the inmate quotes. OPR also says the Criminal Investigation Department holds detainees for long periods without sufficient justification.
Earlier sources describe isolation at Mogadishu Central Prison. A 2012 UN assessment found that the prison’s usual disciplinary measures were rationing food, losing conduct points and an isolation room. Custodial Corps staff said no one had spent more than 15 days there and that inmates in isolation could leave twice a day for up to two hours. The assessment found no formal disciplinary process or complaint procedure, and evidence that children had been shackled and physically restrained.
Neither the UN’s 2024 assessment nor OPR’s February 2026 nine-prisons report describes solitary confinement, so the claim rests on OPR’s annual reports and the 2012 assessment. I found no source documenting chaining or solitary specifically for inmates with mental illness in federal prisons.
Very few people. The UN reports three pre-announced inspections in 2022, none in 2023, and a complaint system only at Garowe Central Prison, without confidentiality. OPR says Somalia’s prisons have no ombudsmen and that access to Godka Jilacow and the Criminal Investigation Directorate headquarters is often restricted for human rights organizations. The State Department says the ICRC, UNICEF and UNODC were allowed joint prison inspections in 2022, and its 2023 report says independent monitors did not report improvements in mistreatment allegations or conditions. No published report I reviewed documents independent access to NISA cells since. SJS says NISA is repeatedly used to target, intimidate and harass journalists over unfavorable reporting.
I did not seek comment from NISA, the Custodial Corps or the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs before publication. CPJ reports that it received no response to its requests for comment. Any responses I receive will be added as an update.
The UN’s recommendations set the baseline: anti-torture legislation that defines torture and sets penalties, an updated Prison Law, regular unannounced inspections, an independent civilian oversight committee, and confidential complaint mechanisms. The 48-hour rule needs enforcing, legal aid needs expanding, and NISA should stop detaining journalists without charge, as SJS demands. Independent monitors should have unrestricted, unannounced access to intelligence-run facilities, including the port facility Warsame names, and relatives should be notified promptly. OPR calls for solitary confinement to be used only as a last resort, for the shortest time and after an independent examination, and the report that some officers own the prison restaurants should be investigated. Recruiting mental health professionals and ending detention for family-related “rehabilitation” belongs on the list too.
How to cite this piece
Abukar, Ismail, for the Organization for Prisoners' Rights. (2026). Inside the Shadows: Incommunicado Detention and Neglect in Somalia’s Detention Network. Mogadishu: OPR. https://opr.org.so/news/inside-the-shadows/