Simon Davis, a former Scotland Yard detective who was hired by the UN to stop al-Qaeda using money transfer systems to fund attacks in Somalia, shot dead
The president of Puntland, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, named a high-level panel to investigate
By Mike Pflanz
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
A British man shot dead while working for the UN in Somalia was a former Scotland Yard detective who launched a new career tracking illegal payments financing terrorism.
Simon Davis, of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, was hired by the United Nations to meet with Somali businesses and government officials to discuss ways to make sure al-Qaeda was not using money transfer systems to fund attacks.
He and a French colleague were attacked soon after they landed on Monday morning in Galkayo, the town in central Somalia closest to the country’s pirate strongholds.
At least two men, one in a Somali police officer’s uniform, opened fire with an AK-47 as Mr Davis and his colleague, Clement Gorrissen, waited to for their visas to be stamped inside the airport’s immigration building.
Both men died within minutes. Their bodies were due to be flown to Nairobi, capital of neighbouring Kenya, on Tuesday night before being repatriated.
Mr Davis’ wife, Anne, a schoolteacher, was understood to have been away from home on a half-term trip when her husband was killed.
Two men were arrested and were interrogated on Tuesday morning. It was unclear if the two men were singled out, or whether the attacker wanted indiscriminately to target Westerners.
Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, president of the semi-autonomous Somali state of Puntland, which includes Galkayo, named a high-level panel including the defence minister and the head of the armed forces to investigate.
William Hague, who was in Rwanda to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the genocide, called the killings “brutal murders”.
"Both were working for the United Nations to help deliver a better future for Somalia,” Mr Hague said. “I urge the Somali authorities to urgently investigate these murders, so as to bring the perpetrators to justice."
Nicholas Kay, head of the UN in Somalia, said the two men were “working in support of the Somali people’s aspiration for a peaceful and stable future”.
“There can be no justification for such a callous attack,” Mr Kay said in a statement.
Both Mr Davis and Mr Gorrissen were consultants for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which in the Horn of Africa is focused on anti-piracy programmes, prosecutions of Somalis arrested for piracy and transnational financial crime.
Mr Davis, who is understood to have left the Metropolitan Police in 2008, was a specialist in anti-money laundering and strategies to combat the financing of terrorism.
Galkayo, roughly 400 miles northwest of Mogadisu, the Somali capital, straddles the border between south-central Somalia and Puntland, one of two self-ruling states in northern Somalia.
It is an administrative headquarters for many United Nations agencies and international charities working in the region, and is regularly visited by expatriates.