Somalia's Spy Agency Blamed for Facilitating Deadly Mogadishu Central Prison Shootout

The National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) has again been drawn into the latest security lapse in Somalia, following the chaotic scene at Mogadishu Central Prison on Monday in which Al-Shabaab convicts exchanged fire with security guards inside the facility.

A total of 19 people — 15 inmates and four soldiers — died, with some reports indicating eight more were wounded. One convict escaped. The gunfight reportedly broke out when a convict snatched a gun from a guard and fired at random, leaving three security officers dead. A source told VOA's Somali Service that the Al-Shabaab operative who escaped was Mubarak Ibrahim Idle, serving a ten-year term handed down in 2014 for terror offences. The government insisted the incident was the work of rogue inmates keen to escape, and that nobody got away.

Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the leader of the Wadajir party, said the intelligence agency should take responsibility, arguing that it had been working closely with Al-Shabaab to destabilise security in a country that has struggled for three decades with insecurity. He claimed that NISA, then under Fahad Yasin, a former Al Jazeera journalist and close ally of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, had been conspiring with Al-Shabaab. "Last night, weapons smuggled into Central Prison to set free Al-Shabab inmates; this should not be blamed on prison authorities, it's a mission by the intelligence agency," he said, calling on the incoming prime minister to hold NISA's leadership accountable.

The government did not respond to the claims. It was not the first time NISA had been accused of collaborating with Al-Shabaab: earlier in the year Kenyan intelligence services made a similar accusation, which the Federal Government dismissed.

A Voice of America report on Monday said the inmates may have obtained the guns through smuggling — pistols brought in when the inmates received visitors, despite an elaborate security protocol. On Tuesday the caretaker government appointed a six-member committee to investigate, including how the inmates obtained weapons and fired on guards in a heavily guarded facility.

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The Organization for Prisoners' Rights is an independent, non-profit civil society organization based in Mogadishu, Somalia, documenting conditions of detention, arbitrary detention, and human rights violations in Somali prisons and detention facilities since 2019.

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