The al-Shabaab group in Somalia has released a video showing a Ugandan soldier held prisoner for over a year, pleading for his government to act to free him.
The video shows a soldier in a Ugandan military uniform, urging the President Yoweri Museveni and his government to set him free from the al-Qaeda-linked militant group.
“Oh Ugandans, I am a soldier of your country, join hands and come up with a solution that can secure my release,” he said in Swahili in the video released late Monday.
He said in the video he was captured in September 2015 in an al-Shabaab attack on an African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) base in the southern Lower Shabelle region.
The soldier identified himself in the video as Masassa M.Y., an AMISOM serviceman since June 2015.
“Please don’t abandon me here,” he added.
Al-Shabaab militants claimed the September 2015 attack in Janale had killed over 50 Ugandan forces in Somalia. One soldier was reported to have been captured.
This comes just a fortnight after suicide bombers attacked the main peacekeeping base in Somalia’s capital, killing at least three Somali security officers near where former army commander Gen. Katumba Wamala was.
READ: Uganda army chief Gen. Katumba heavily attacked by Al-Shabab suicide bombers
