Son of Somalia president flees Turkiye after crash
The republic’s prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant on Friday after police went to the suspect’s home only to find “he had been gone since Dec. 2,” the channel said
Updated 09 December 2023
AFP
ISTANBUL: The son of Somalia’s president, alleged to have knocked over and killed a delivery rider in Istanbul, has fled Turkiye despite an international arrest warrant, media reported.
Police had released Mohammed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud without any bail conditions after preliminary investigations into the accident, said daily newspaper Cumhuriyet.
“The suspect left Turkiye freely,” said Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The mayor — a leading opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — accused the authorities of “allowing this escape” and being “incapable of defending citizens’ rights in their own country.”
The son of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had collided with a motorbike delivery man on Nov. 30, according to a police report quoted by A Haber television.
Father of two children, Yunus Emre Gocer, died in hospital six days later.
The republic’s prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant on Friday after police went to the suspect’s home only to find “he had been gone since Dec. 2,” the channel said.
The dead man’s lawyer told Cumhuriyet that a first traffic police report into the crash had blamed the victim for “negligence.”
A second expert’s report with video recordings showed that the Somali suspect was “100 percent responsible,” the lawyer said, but it added doubts he would “ever be caught.”
Turkiye has had close relations with Somalia for the last 10 years and is the Horn of Africa nation’s leading economic partner, notably in the construction, education and health sectors and in military cooperation.
First climate migrants arrive in Australia from sinking Tuvalu in South Pacific
Updated 3 sec ago
SYDNEY: The first climate migrants to leave the remote Pacific island nation of Tuvalu have arrived in Australia, hoping to preserve links to their sinking island home, foreign affairs officials said on Thursday. More than one-third of Tuvalu’s 11,000 population applied for a climate visa to migrate to Australia, under a deal struck between the two countries two years ago. The intake is capped at 280 visas annually to prevent a brain drain in the small island nation. Among the islanders selected in the initial intake of climate migrants is Tuvalu’s first female forklift driver, a dentist, and a pastor focused on preserving their spiritual life thousands of kilometers (miles) from home, Australian government officials said. Tuvalu, one of the countries at greatest risk from climate change because of rising sea levels, is a group of low-lying atolls scattered across the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii. Manipua Puafolau, from Tuvalu’s main island of Funafuti, arrived in Australia a fortnight ago. A trainee pastor with the most prominent church in Tuvalu, he plans to live in the small town of Naracoorte in the state of South Australia, where several hundred Pacific Islanders work in seasonal agriculture and meat processing jobs. “For the people moving to Australia, it is not only for their physical and economic well-being, but also calls for spiritual guidance,” he said in a video released by Australia’s foreign affairs department. Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Teo visited the Tuvaluan community in Melton, Melbourne, last month to emphasize the importance of maintaining strong ties and cultural bonds across borders as citizens migrate, Tuvalu officials said. On Tuvalu’s main atoll of Funafuti, the land is barely wider than the road in many stretches. Families live under thatched roofs, and children play football on the airport runway due to space constraints. By 2050, NASA scientists project daily tides will submerge half of Funafuti atoll, home to 60 percent of Tuvalu’s residents, where villagers cling to a strip of land as narrow as 20 meters (65 feet). The forecast assumes a one-meter rise in sea levels, while the worst case, double that, would put 90 percent of the country’s main atoll under water.
CLIMATE VISAS OFFER ‘MOBILITY WITH DIGNITY’ Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the climate migrants would contribute to Australian society. The visa offered “mobility with dignity, by providing Tuvaluans the opportunity to live, study and work in Australia as climate impacts worsen,” Wong said in a statement to Reuters. Support services are being established by Australia to help Tuvaluan families set up in the east coast city of Melbourne, Adelaide in South Australia and in the northern state of Queensland. Kitai Haulapi, the first female forklift driver in Tuvalu, recently married and will relocate to Melbourne, population five million. In a video released by Australia’s foreign affairs department she says that she hopes to find a job in Australia and continue to contribute to Tuvalu by sending money back to her family. Dentist Masina Matolu, who has three school-aged children and a seafarer husband, will move with her family to the northern Australian city of Darwin. She plans to work with indigenous communities. “I can always bring whatever I learn new from Australia back to my home culture, just to help,” she said in a video statement.
