A court jailed a radio journalist for six years on Saturday for airing an interview with an Al-Qaeda linked militia leader in Somalia's breakaway Puntland state.

File image Director of Horsed Media, Abdifatah Jama Mire, was arrested late Friday after broadcasting an interview with Islamist commander Mohamed Said Atom whose militants are fighting the Puntland administration in Galgala area.
“The journalist was given a six-year jail term and ordered to pay a 500-dollar fine for violating the anti-terror law in our constitution. He paid the price of the wrongs he did,” Puntland's deputy information minister Abdiqani Salad Gurey told AFP by phone.
Mire's colleague, Nuh Muse Birjeb, said security forces raided the radio station and took several staff members with them, who were all later released except for the director.
Puntland forces have been battling Atom's militia in Somalia's northern Galgala mountainous region. Atom is on a UN Security Council watch list.
(Source: Times Live)