The forces ordered Mogadishu-based Simba Radio off the air and arrested its chief Abdullahi Ali Farak and a journalist, according to a reporter who works there. The radio on Wednesday evening interviewed Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a radical Islamist leader, who said he was behind a suicide attack earlier in the day on an Ethiopian army base near a hotel where Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was staying.
Sheikh Mukhtar -- also known as Abu Mansur after training in Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban in the early 2000s -- presented himself in the interview as a spokesman for the Somali Islamist movement in Mogadishu, but he has commanded numerous other militia fighters over the past decade.
Last month, Somali security forces besieged and opened fire at Shabelle radio, destroying equipment and forcing it to close for 15 days after they accused one of Shabelle reporters of hurling a grenade at a police patrol.
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