The U.S Department on Friday designated two Al-Shabaab militant leaders to be global terrorists and ordered that their property and interests in the property to these individuals must be blocked and reported to the State Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The Department said in a statement that these two men are Ali Mohamed Rage, the group’s spokesperson, and Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, facilitator and operational planner for the group.
“Ali Mohamed Rage, also known as Ali Dheere, is al-Shabaab’s spokesman and a senior leader of the group. He replaced Sheikh Mukhtar Robowas al-Shabaab’s top spokesman in May 2009. Rage has been involved in attack planning that has targeted areas in Kenya and Somalia”, said the statement.
“AbdikadirMohamed Abdikadir, also known as Ikrima, is a facilitator and operational planner. As of November 2019, Abdikadirwas an al-Shabaab senior leader and served as the Head of Operations and Logistics. Abdikadir had also directed previous attack planning for al-Shabaab”, the statement added.
These Al-Shabaab leaders were among five, 3 of them from Mozambique added to the terror blacklist.
The United States is committed to disrupting the financing methods of ISIS-Mozambique, JNIM, and al-Shabaab — all of which are designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations and SDGTs — limiting their abilities to conduct further attacks against civilians and supporting our partners in efforts to disrupt terrorism finance. Addressing the terrorist threat across the continent will require working closely with our partners to degrade the capacity and operations of these terrorist groups, combatting their control and influence in West, East, and Southern Africa.
