A Puntland military court has sentenced seven men accused of having links to ISIS, which operates from mountainous areas of the Cal Miskaad range in Somalia’s Bari region.
The First Instance Military Court sentenced three defendants—Abdi Yasin Ismail Sugulle, Mohamed Roble Mohamed Nur, and Abdirahman Abdi Said, who was tried in absentia—to death by firing squad after finding them guilty of alleged membership in ISIS.
Four other defendants—Aydarus Hirsi Ise, Abdihakim Abdullahi Xaliye, Gabshe Mahmoud Hassan, and Mahmoud Gaashe Osman—were each sentenced to five years in military prison.
The defendants have the right to appeal the verdicts before Puntland’s Military Supreme Court within one month.
The ruling comes as Puntland continues security operations against ISIS militants based in the Cal Miskaad mountains of Bari, where the group has maintained a presence and faced military pressure from Puntland security forces.