Netanyahu and Somali president met secretly in 2020, ex-diplomat claims
GOOBJOOG NEWS|JERUSALEM: The Times of Israel, a local newspaper with a wide circulation in Israel has published a report on a secret meeting it said took place between former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the information leaked by the Times Newspaper, The meeting between the two leaders at the time took place in early 2020, according to the Israeli newspaper which quoted a former diplomat.
According to the article seen by Mustaqbal, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo flew to Jerusalem in February 2020,only accompanied by one individual – Balal Osman, his envoy for the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Farmajo and Netanyahu may have discussed creating relations between the two countries, the newspaper reported.
However, the Somali government and its Israeli counterpart are yet to announce a meeting between their leaders and that they are building ties.
“But these efforts were not supported by the US government under then-President Donald Trump, who did not want to include Somalia in regional affairs,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.
He said Trump hated Somalia because of the Democratic Party’s most vocal critic, Ilhan Omar, who hailed from Somalia as a refugee.
The diplomat, who was interviewed on Monday, also said that a previous meeting between Farmajo and Netanyahu had taken place on November 28, 2017.
At the time, the report reveals, they met at a meeting in Nairobi between Netanyahu and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, according to the diplomat.
The 2017 meeting came at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu.
But there has been no word from the Kenyan government confirming or denying that Netanyahu met with Farmajo.
An Israeli government spokesman did not respond to a request from the newspaper to comment on the matter.
According to the diplomat, Farmaajo also instructed Somalia’s ambassador to Switzerland, Faduma Abdullahi Mohamud, to abstain on a 2019 UN Human Rights Council vote condemning Israel over the Golan Heights. He wanted to test domestic and international reaction to the small, public show of support for Israel.
Mohamud was summoned home by Somalia’s Foreign Ministry after the vote. Farmaajo had no choice but to punish her after receiving both internal and external threats, said the former diplomat.
The news comes amid rumors that the current president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, visited Israel in secret last month. Any such meeting has been denied by Villa Somalia.
The Times of Israel