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December 23, 2005
Somalia: Islamists Shot Aid Couple Because They Were Thought To Be Christian Proselytisers
Today's Telegraph announces that an inquest into the deaths of Dick and Enid Eyeington has said that the pair were assumed by their killers to be "infidels" who wrongly assumed the pair were attempting to make Africans converts to Christianity.
Married in 1963, the couple who came originally from county Durham, Britain, have lived in Africa for more than thirty years, where they worked with underprivileged children in Tanzania, Swaziland and Somaliland.
They were in their home in Somaliland watching TV on the evening of October 20, 2003, when their killers entered and shot them. Dick Eyeington was holding the remote control of the TV as he was shot four times from an AK-47 assault rifle. His wife, who worked with HIV sufferers, was killed by a single shot to the head, an inquest in Westminster's coroner's court was told.
Somaliland is an enclave in the northern part of Somalia. Somalia has been in a state of total anarchy since the fall of President Said Barre in 1990. The nation is still run by warlords and Islamist militias, even though a UN-sponsorred government has recently been appointed.
Somaliland declared itself independent of Somalia in 1991, and though not officially recognised internationally, it is more peaceful and ordered than the regions around Mogadishu, the capital. There are active cells of al-Qaeda in Somalia, who have an ambition to destabilise and overthrow Somaliland.
In March last year, a German aid worker and his Kenyan girlfriend were attacked, and their assailant was later arrested. He confessed to killing Dick and Enid Eyeington.
Det Chief Insp Jill Bailey told the hearing that last month four men, including Mohammed Ali Essa, who fired the AK47, had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death by firing squad. The terrorists shouted "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) after being sentenced and are still awaiting execution.Miss Bailey said the men were part of a terrorist cell called El Itihad which had killed an Italian nun a week earlier. She also said that Essa's brother-in-law, Adan Ayro, who owned the house in which Essa was captured, could have had links to al-Qa'eda. A plan to blow up an Ethiopian airliner and bomb-making manuals were uncovered during the investigations.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 23, 2005 4:18 PM
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