A military court in Puntland has on Monday sentenced eight men alleged of being linked to the Islamist militant group al-Shabab.
Court prosecutor Abdikarim Hassan Firdhiye told reporters that they were involved in terror acts and were found of guilty of being part of the al-Qaeda-linked group and were sentenced to 20 years of prison each.
The senior court official declined to give more details of the suspects.
Last year, Puntland executed 13 suspected al-Shabab members including a woman, after the military court found them guilty of orchestrating an assassination of a famous scholar Dr Ahmed Haji Abdirahman. But al-Shabab denied that none of them was part of the group.
This latest sentences comes as the semi-autonomous region has tightened its security amid of the on-going al-Shabab offensives in Southern Somalia and concerned of the militants to flee to the stable region.
Puntland leader Abdiweli Mohamed Ali vowed to fight against the insecurity that has been raising in the region for the past years.
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