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Somalia President Escaped Assassination

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
NEWS
October 24, 2004
Posted to the web October 25, 2004

By Maina Muiruri
Nairobi
The new President of Somalia, Mr Ahmed Abdulahi Yusuf, was once a fugitive in
Mombasa, fighting the government of the late dictator Siad Barre.
For four years, starting 1978, Abdulahi was a frequent visitor to Mombasa,
until in 1982 when he waged a guerrilla war against Barre from Ethiopia.
While in Kenya, he lived with members of his Majeerteen clan in Tudor Estate.
In Mombasa, Abdulahi was specifically often housed by his cousin Ahmed Mohamoud
Farah at a house next to Khamisi High School.
Barre, apparently fearing the influence of Abdulahi's then Somali Salvation
Democratic Front, discreetly sent assassins to eliminate members of the
Majeerteen clan in Mombasa and Eastleigh who were giving refuge to the rebels.
In April 1985, while Adbulahi had already left Mombasa for Ethiopia, Barre's
hit men made stealth forays into Kenya to eliminate the Majeerteen clansmen
thought to support his nemesis.
Seven Somali men were stabbed or shot in different incidents in Eastleigh
Estate that were reported as ordinary crime.
Assassins struck
But the most heart-rending case was in Mombasa where assassins struck and
stubbed to death the man who had housed Abdulahi, businessman Ahmed Mohamoud
Farah.
Mohammed Ahmed son of Ahmed Farah Mohammed Farah, a businessman who was
assassinated in 1985 in Mombasa by Siad Barre's soldiers.
Mohamoud's son, Ahmed Mohamoud, who was turning 11 on April 4, 1985, the day
his father was killed, recounted the chilling incident that was treated by the
Kenya government as ordinary crime.
Ahmed, now 30, recalls in detail the moment assassins arrived in Tudor to kill
his father, who often housed the man who would-be president.
"My father had known that assassins from Somalia were in the country targeting
people who were thought by Barre to support Adbulahi. He never thought they
would come for him," Mohamoud said in Mombasa. See separate story)
It was no coincidence that Abdulahi found himself in Mombasa after he fell out
with Barre. Most of his Majeerteen clan live in Kenya, especially in Isiolo,
Eastleigh and Mombasa.
He could not return to Somalia because he had been discharged from the army
after organising an abortive coup against Barre. Adbulahi was a colonel, while
Barre was a general.
After Barre overthrew the Somali government in 1969, he went on an offensive
against the Majeerteen clansmen, which prompted Abdulahi to attempt to
overthrow him in 1978.
The coup failed and Abdulahi fled to Kenya where he sought help from his
clansmen. That was how he arrived at Tudor where his third cousin, Farah,
housed him several times.
Mohamoud recalls how the future president would arrive discreetly at their
Tudor house and spend several nights there.
"They were close friends with my father and he would sometimes stay for days,"
he said.
According to records provided by Ahmed, Abdulahi ran his government in exile
from Kenya.
In Tudor, Muse Mohamoud, who was his shadow minister for finance, would at
times join Abdulahi.
Adbulahi left Tudor for the last time in 1982 for Ethiopia from where he waged
war on Barre with support of the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
But he fell out with Mengistu who imprisoned him in Addis Ababa in 1982.
It was while Abdulahi was in prison that Barre's hit men assassinated most of
his friends in Eastleigh and his cousin in Mombasa.
Most were stabbed on the streets, while some were shot dead.
The killing of Mohamoud was reported at Makupa Police Station.
"Police were apparently not interested in pursuing the case.
Fled to Kenya
We even knew that some of the assassins hid at Tudor Primary School after
killing my father but police refused to pursue them with a sniffer dog when we
told them where the suspects were hiding," says Ahmed.
When the new Ethiopian government released Abdulahi in 1992, he fled to Kenya
but he never returned to Tudor to see what became of the family that had
previously housed him.
Ahmed met Abdulahi in Hurlingham, Nairobi, but Abdulahi did not acknowledge the
son of his late ally and cousin.
"I met him in a house in Hurlingham, he was told by my uncle that I was the son
of Mohamoud. He just smiled, looked at me but said nothing," says Ahmed.
That was in 1996 and Ahmed says: "That was the last time I met him. The first
time I saw him was when I was a small boy in our house in Tudor."
Mohamoud feels that the new president owes his family some reciprocation.
"Our father was killed because he supported him, now he does not even seem to
remember that," laments Ahmed, breaking into tears through the interview.
After Mohamoud was killed, his wife, and eleven children, five boys and six
girls, fled the country. Only Ahmed was left behind.

   

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