Salman Jamal was a prominent news reporter in Somalia when he was nearly killed in a bomb attack.
‘You’re famous, what are you doing here?’: The asylum seeker who has gone from Somali TV to a bunk bed in Citywest
“The target was me but they were killed,” says Jamal. “I was a newscaster and I had reported that what they were doing is not right. I said this is not what real Islamic people do, killing civilians. They had told me I was a target, that what I was writing made me a target. Jamal is one of the 2,585 Somali nationals seeking asylum in Ireland and staying in State-provided accommodation. Somali asylum applications represented 8 per cent of all international protection claims in 2023, behind Nigerians, who made up nearly 16 per cent of all applicants, and Algerians, who made up 11 per cent, while Afghan nationals also represented 8 per cent of applications.
Following the 2015 bombing, Jamal spent an extended period in Turkey undergoing medical treatment for his injuries, which included the loss of an eye. Jamal eventually returned to Somalia, where he worked as a media adviser within the Somali parliament. However, the threats from the Al-Shabaab terrorist group immediately resumed, he says.
In 2022, during a visit to his family home, a gunman appeared at the front door and shot Jamal’s father dead. Jamal realised he needed to leave the country to keep his family safe and paid an agent to fly to Europe. “I didn’t have any other options, my mother told me I had to leave. They told me ‘you survived in 2015 but you won’t survive again’. They also told me they’d kill my kids.”
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