Mogadishu (Sunatimes) – Deadly suicide blast that ripped through Shamo Hotel in Mogadishu December 3, 2009 killed at least 30 people most of them Doctors, but with them were four government ministers and four journalists.

The bomber targeted a university graduation ceremony being held by Benadir University which produced the first patch of doctors in Somalia in 20 years.

The bomber was a Somali from Denmark who detonated himself to get paradise. He sought the paradise among the coffins of at least 70 people whom he targeted because they invited some government ministers in their ceremony.

It is sore, awkward and sorrowful that the graduating students faced the tedious attack at their happiest time which they wanted to see for almost six years because of one’s ambitions to make political gains or be in paradise. I am sure Allaah will not pay paradise through one’s blood.

The suicide bomber targeted the Government officials including Prof. Ibrahim Hassan Addow the minister for higher education, Dr. Qamar Adam Ali minister of health, Dr. Ahmed Abdulahi Wayel the minister for education and Dr. Saleban Olad Roble the minister for Youth and sport.

All of them died in the attack. Doctors including the dean of Benadir University’s medicine department Dr. Mohamed Warsame Shahid were also killed in the attack. Journalists, Hassan Subeyr Haji, Mohamed Amin Adan, Abdulkadir Abdulgafar (Yasir) were also among them dead scattered in Shamo hotel in the shocking day.

The day was supposed to be a historic day for Somalia which was producing the first group of doctors in 2 decades of conflict and unrest. But it turned into a bloody day, which the people ended up in collecting flesh of the highly anticipated doctors from the ground and the walls of Shamo Hotel.

The decoration of the site, the beautiful slogans and the waited awards turned into the tickets to the graves of the participants, graduators and their teachers as well as the officials and journalists. The perpetrators of the brutal attack remain unpunished.

Though the attack sparked public anger, it was not more than cursing, condemning and crying, it didn’t bring more than sadness that shaded public, no one had ability to talk to the tyrant groups behind the tyranny acts.

The perpetrator groups didn’t acknowledge the dimension of their acts and didn’t says sorry, thought they didn’t publicly claim the responsibility and that silence can be respected as acknowledgement of their massacre.

Hour later after the attack in December 3, 2009, as I was in shock and devastated mood, I wrote an article titled “The martyrs of Shamo Hotel” which I meant the victims not the perpetrators. I received both cheers and jeers. Those who jeered at me told me that I am apostate because that I called the Shamo blast victims as martyrs, but a lot of people considered my article as a relief.

Those who sent me the threat emails didn’t mention their names and the groups they represented but they just send me emails through mails with abbreviated words in the names.

I told them that I am not apostate and an article, which I wrote about the victims including my colleagues, friends and school mates, can’t drive me out of my religion, Islam.

After a year, the painful memories of the harsh attack are remaining the families, friends and parents of the victims who are also suffering as internally displaced in the outskirts of Mogadishu.

The Somali artists in Diaspora, in UK, led by a well known artist Abdi Shire Jama (Joogle) produced songs carrying strong messages against the perpetrators of the attack. They produced a song called Qaylo Dhaan, which they told the perpetrators to stop massacring the people and destroying the remains of the country.

In my article last year, I said that the Somali religious leaders are responsible for the continuation of the human rights violations in the name of the religion. I strongly believe that the role of the religious leaders is missing. Some of them are part of the ongoing violence in the name of the religion, they are making Fatwas legitimating the tyrant groups to continue killing the people, others are silent and very few of them individually condemn the violence.

The massacred graduators were learning in Mogadishu, the riskiest city on earth, which is now compared to an open grave which has all the elements of the graves except the angels. The city is like the grave a fearful scene. The fear is created by the tyrant groups in the city.

Every person in Mogadishu is in the dead raw. No one knows who sentenced to death, what kinds of charges, the time to succumb and who will execute. The answer is all the way to the person until the time bullets start to hit on the person who realizes that he is dying because of crimes he doesn’t know.

Those who learn inside such a city, are really heroes, if they were killed in their graduation ceremony they turn into martyrs.

In Somalia the religion itself and the justice are hostages for the tyrant groups, they need to be freed from the captives holding them as hostages.

Finally, I wish the Shamo Hotel martyrs to rest in the paradise and get their graves with light of paradise and Allah’s kind. Ameen.

Translated by Dahir Alasow

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