Somali authorities on Tuesday released the local head of the World Food Programme (WFP), who was seized nearly a week ago when government forces stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu.
“He is safely back in the office. He was brought by some government officers as well as local UN staffers,” a UN official said in Mogadishu.
A Somali security official also confirmed the release, saying “the WFP officer has been released this morning [Tuesday]. He is back to work.”
Idris Mohamed Osman (57), the chief WFP representative in the Somali capital, was detained on October 17 by dozens of armed security personnel who forced their way into the UN compound.
The detention of Osman, a trained lawyer who has worked for WFP in Somalia for 12 years, prompted the agency to halt food distribution to 75 600 residents displaced by fighting between the government and insurgents since January.
The WFP complained that it had not received any official explanation for Idris’s detention, which prompted widespread condemnation, including from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi had said last week that the UN officer was under investigation and would be released only if he was found innocent. There was no explanation for his release on Tuesday.
The agency’s chief, Josette Sheeran, also called last week on the Somali government to provide protection for its workers in the war-shattered nation.
Several humanitarian agencies have ceased operating in the volatile Horn of Africa country ravaged by internecine violence since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The WFP is the food aid arm of the United Nations that works to combat hunger in underdeveloped nations with severe shortages.
In addition to Osman’s detention, the Rome-based agency has also suffered interruption of its food deliveries at the hands of pirates operating along Somalia’s 3 700km of unpatrolled coast.
It renewed pleas on Monday for the deployment of foreign naval vessels to protect food aid in Somali waters a day after its chartered freighter escaped a piracy attack.
In 2005 the WFP temporarily suspended maritime aid after two pirate attacks on its ships.
Somalia has been without an effective government for the past 16 years and the near-endless violence has defied numerous internationally-backed peace initiatives. — AFP