Somalia: Wife of Islamic State leader jailed for 8 years

A military tribunal in Somalia has sentenced the wife of the head of a terrorist organization linked to the Islamic State group to eight years in prison for passing on information and organising financial transactions for the group, a military official said Monday.

Fartun Abdirashid, wife of Abdiqadir Mumin, head of the Daesh group, was sentenced on Monday at a military court.

She has been under custody since her arrest in March last year in the capital, Mogadishu.

Abdirashid was accused of frequently transferring $100 to $200 to the group’s members, the public prosecutor’s office said.

She had a working relationship with Bilal Al-Sudaani, a senior Islamic State group official who was killed on Wednesday in a US raid in Somalia’s northern Bari region.

Mumin, a former al-Shabab cleric, pledged his allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015.

IS holds a smaller footprint in Somalia compared to the al-Shabab terrorist group that has carried out numerous attacks in the country.

Somalia’s forces are carrying out an offensive against al-Shabab that has been described at the most significant in more than a decade.