Two top al-Shabaab leaders are among five alleged Islamist militants based in Africa that US government added to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list on Friday, the State Department confirmed.
According to statement by US State Department, Ali Mohamed Rage and Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir are placed on the list alongside senior leaders from the Islamic State’s Mozambique affiliate and Al Qaeda-linked militants based in Mali.
“Sidang Hitta and Salem Ould al-Hasan, senior leaders of Mali-based al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, also were designated, as were Ali Mohamed Rage and Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, leaders of the al Shabaab group of Somalia,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Ali Mohamed Rage who is also known as Ali Dhere has been serving as the spokesperson for al-Shabaab in the past ten year.
Ali Dhere is also a member of al-Shabaab group’s Shura Council which acts as the decision-making organ for the group.
He also served as the group’s chairman of Banadir region sometime in 2010.
The man in the list is Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir aka Ikrima who is said to be an al-Shabaab facilitator and operational planner.
Ikrima, who was born in 1979 to a middle-class Kenyan-Somali family residing in Mombasa.
He was educated in Kenya where he completed his O level education before proceeding to study French and computer science concurrently at two different institutions – Alliance Française and another tertiary institution located in Nairobi, for two years.
There is a $3 million bounty on Ikrima’s head offered by the US Reward for Justice Program.
