Dear, Yassin Juma

BY: Abdirashid Ahmed

I think everything has a limit and Yassin Juma’s “investigation” into some topics, particularly on terrorisms and victims of terror, should not be done in a casual manner in the way he did in his last post.
I was not really surprised when Yassin Juma posted on his blogspot Monday an “expose” about who killed the three Somali guys whose bodies were found at Murang’a river and why. He bluntly painted the three guys as terrorists, or figures with terror motives and lightly poised their killers as the good guys solving the whole thing.

Yassin Juma (Right) with a colleague during the Idd-ul-Fitr in Nairobi. (photo Courtesy)

Yassin, my elder bro, I am sorry to say this but when matters death and disappearances are involved, please try to support your claims with documentary, or any other tangible evidence. Or better still, try and substantiate your claims.
You don’t report such emotional topics based on hearsay. After your Monday post, a lot of people have accepted your report as the cardinal truth, yet it was not anywhere close. You see, my reservations about your posts did not start yesterday; it started immediately after the Garissa University attack. You reported that Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi was the terrorist behind the attack, but was he the only attacker? Why didn’t you name the three other non-Somali guys? And then, your source of information on the profiles of the attackers is suspicious. If at all “they” supplied you with the identity of Abdirahman, did you take your time to figure out why they withheld the three other terrorists involved in the attack? Or was it a deliberate action on your side? When the world believed your story and every media reported, one person did not believe you—Mohamed Ali of Jicho Pevu. In a tweet a month after the attack, he wondered why the names of the other three guys have not been made public like it was done to Abdirahman’s.

Your post had caused the Kenyan Somalis a great deal of anguish. It justified the overriding belief that Al Shabab attackers are mainly Somalis. But I believe that had you named the three other non-Somali guys, the blame would be neutralized. And when you posted that story yesterday, you unknowingly justified the action of the killers and demonized the killed.
You dashed the hope of that mother crying for justice and justified the action of the killers. Because you posted something that can easily pass for an expose’, without evidence of course, someone somewhere has believed your writing as the cardinal truth. Please Yassin, my elder bro, the Kenyan Muslims and the Somali community are a grieving lot and any slight misinformation on their part, or those killed under the pretext of fighting terror, could turn the tables and significantly slow their call for justice.

–Abdirashid Ahmed is a student of Journalism and Mass Communications at Mount Kenya University, nairobi.

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