The FBI arrested Mohamed Tahlil at New York's JFK airport on 10 August 2018. Federal agents flew Tahlil to New York City during the summer of 2018 as part of an operation designed to lure him into a trap.
Tahlil contacted the journalist via Facebook message two months after the reporter was released in September 2014. The journalist had been held hostage for 977 days after being kidnapped on the 10th day of travel to Somalia near Galkayo.
During his captivity, the hostage spent a six-month period on a hijacked tuna vessel. About three weeks before being placed on that vessel, 28 fishers from East Asia were captured by the same group.
Family members, friends, benefactors and magazines sent $1.8 million in ransom money to Somalia for the release of the captive. Tahlil claimed that while the men who captured the journalist were the “bad group”, he and his guards constituted the good group.
In a message, Tahlil wrote, “I am happy u r out of bondage.” He also stated in correspondence, “I live in constant fear,” he wrote, “and I have no one to help me … I am left with only two options: to flee the country illegally or to continue living this way.”
Mohamed Garfanji tortured Rolly Tambara by dangling him from a tree and beating him with a bamboo cane. The journalist authored a book titled The Desert and the Sea, which was featured in an article by the New York Times in late 2018.
“I am happy u r out of bondage,” Tahlil wrote.
Tahlil
