Secret Somali Believer Abducted, Later Killed by Al-Shabab

One week before Christmas in 2013, Abdi was driving to work as usual in Mogadishu when the sound of gunfire erupted all around his car. As he slowed the vehicle, a group of men armed with AK-47 assault rifles approached the driver’s side and shot Abdi to death before fleeing in a getaway car. Al-Shabab had gotten their man.

Abdi was one of fewer than 200 secret believers in Somalia. Like most of the others, he had been raised as a Muslim but later found new life in Christ. His first experience with al-Shabab had occurred in 2011, when they found pages of a Bible in his house while randomly searching his neighborhood.

Abdi was immediately dragged away to an underground concrete cell, where he was tortured with a wooden baton and locked in a room with dead bodies. His captors demanded the names of other Christians, but Abdi wouldn’t give them up.

Several weeks after his abduction, Abdi took the opportunity to escape after noticing that a guard had forgotten to lock his cell door one night. Abdi ran from his cell and scrambled over a wall as al-Shabab guards fired at him. The militants chased him in two trucks, but he managed to escape.

VOM supported Abdi as a front-line worker for several years as he witnessed for Christ in Somalia, and we shared his story in our June 2012 newsletter. Although he gave his life just over a year later, his legacy lives on through several other Somali men whom he led to Christ.

Small groups of Somali believers continue to meet secretly in homes or cafés to discuss the Bible. They understand that if discovered, they face almost certain death. But for these believers, the truth that sets them free is worth the risk.