Somalia has declared the top UN official in the country a persona non grata after his publication of a letter questioning the involvement of U.N.-funded Somali security forces in the arrest of an election candidate who had previously defected from al-Shabaab in 2017. The arrest led to a local uproar in which over 15 people were killed and 300 arrested. The UN official’s letter asked for an explanation on the legal basis for the politician’s arrest and for an investigation into the demonstration deaths after the arrest. The UN letter from the official also included similar letters from the EU, Germany and the UK in which they announced the temporary suspension of their funding for the police in one district due to their conduct during the recent election. Somalia has accused the UN official of interfering in Somalian internal affairs, escalating a confrontation that could strain UN-Somalian relations as well as Mogadishu’s relationship to the various autonomous states within the borders of Somalia as it exists on contemporary maps.
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