Somalian terror group says it has executed a ‘British spy’

SOMALIA’S al-shabaab terrorist group claimed to have killed a Somali British citizen accused of spying for MI6.

The terrorist group said it had shot five men accused of spying, including the British citizen, in a southern province of the country on Tuesday.

Mohamed Abu Abdalla, al-shabaab’s governor for the Jubba regions, said the group had admitted espionage in court.

“Awale Ahmed Mohamed, 32, spied for MI6 and he came from Britain to Somalia to establish Islamic State,” he said.

The group said in a separate statement that the Briton had admitted to spying on the Somali diaspora in Britain before being sent to Somalia.

It said three of the other men had been accused of spying for the United States and had admitted to leading US special forces on a house raid and helping with drone strikes. The fifth man was accused of spying for Somali intelligence.

The group said the men were tried by an al-shabaab judge before being tied to poles in an open field outside Jilib, a town in the southern Middle Jubba region, and executed by firing squad in front of hundreds of people.

The Foreign Office declined to comment on the reports.

Harun Maruf, a Somali journalist and author of Inside al-shabaab: The Secret History of al-qaeda’s Most Powerful Ally, quoted unnamed sources as saying that the man the terror group called Awale was, in fact, a known jihadist who has been wanted by UK authorities for five years.

Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed was 27 when he gave British police the slip in November 2013 by escaping from a mosque in Acton, west London, dressed in a burka.

He had been the subject of a terrorism prevention and investigation measure, a court-approved order requiring suspects to report to the police daily, wear an electronic tag and sleep at a specified address. However, Mohamed simply cut his tag and walked away.