GENERAL ALI SAMATAR A DUCK WAITING TO BE COOKED.

[GAAROODI]

HIS ultimate downfall is the very downfall of the somali state. Thinks to highly of himself and seriously under-estimated his enemies will to destroy him.

 

 

Do you remember after the court case of some former somali officer in canada who use to be a janitor in a gas station, he fled to the u.s. in fact they all did. Now i guess you should get reader to pack up your bags and head for the mexican border.

 

Somalia (Qaran News)- Former Major General Mohamed Nuur Galaal who was one of the top commanders in the Somali National Army during the Mohamed Siyad Barre regime told the press today that Former Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Samatar gave the orders to target civilians in Northern Somali and therefore he should be held accountable for his actions.

 

Major General Galaal informed the press that what Mohamed Ali Samatar is being accused in the Supreme Court of United States is not a false allegation but rather a fact. General Galaal told the press that he was present when Mohamed Ali Samantar told the heads of the arm forces to target civilians in Northern Somali during the civil war of the 80s.

 

Major General Galaal said “it was un-Islamic and inhumane to bomb civilians in the city of Hargeisa” and that it was an operation that Mr. Samatar played a major role.

 

Mohamed Ali Samatar or as he is currently known as Samatar Ali is now living in Virginia area where he is being sued in civil court. However before the case can move to civil court the Supreme Court of the United States has to decide if a head of “sovereign “can be sued. However the question that needs to be answer is if the sovereign immunity would apply to Mr. Mohamed Ali Samantar.

 

SomalilandPress

 

the case has now reach the supreme court and the Somaliland government has specifically asked for his extradition to Somaliland to face justice, his citizenship will also be revoked.

[GAAROODI]

http://www.dillapress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=659:general-muhammad-ali-sama tar-former-pm-of-somalia-in-court-human-rights-violations&catid=42:news&Itemid=61

[GAAROODI]

Over the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to read several articles that were published by some of the most prominent newspapers in the United States about the suit that was brought up against General Ali Samater by a group of Somali citizens. This included a story by Brigid Schulte of the Washington Post that was published on March 2nd, 2010. The suit which was initially filed in a lower court has miraculously made it to the United States Supreme Court. The four plaintiffs who started the suit allege that they were subjected to torture and that their human rights were grossly violated during the Somali government’s genocidal campaign against the people of the north in the 1980s. I also had a chance to read some of the reactions to the story posted on some of the Somali websites and also monitored the buzz that the story created in some of the popular chat rooms.

 

From what I have seen, General Samater’s predicament appears to have touched a raw nerve with people on both sides of the human rights issue in Somalia. It appears to have rekindled an interest in a debate that Somalis should have had a long time ago; a debate that should have objectively defined what led to the demise of the Somali nation. Those of you who read the comments that Samater’s legal challenge generated would attest to the fact that some of the comments from the diaspora were good, some were bad, and some were downright ugly. The insults and the diatribes that were exchanged are a clear indication that Somalis are not ready for a healthy, sophisticated, and honest discourse. A debilitating tribal dogma that dictates one’s allegiance to kinship rather than to the principles of reason, justice, accountability, and objectivity appears to be holding us back even in the 21st century.

 

But we have to call a spade a spade and nothing can be further from the truth. Somalia is part of a global community and there are universal ideals that people all around the world long for when they find themselves at the receiving end of what they perceive is a miscarriage of justice. Therefore, to ostracize the complainants who started the lawsuit in their pursuit of justice and to absolve General Samater of any responsibility for his actions during the military dictatorship in Somalia would be utterly immoral and irresponsible.

 

The atrocities that were committed by Siyad Barre and his henchmen, including General Samatar who was in fact known to be the chief strategist for the late dictator, are well documented by the international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A cursory look at the much celebrated book, “A Government At War With Its Own People”, that was published by Human rights Watch in February 1988 suffices to shed light on the kind of gross human rights violations that were committed by the Somali military forces when General Samater was at the helm.

 

The book details in a chilling, comprehensive way the brutality that the people of Northern Somalia (now Somaliland) endured during the Somali military’s apparent ethnic cleansing campaign. We have to remember that they were targeted simply because they belonged to a distinct social group.

It was well known in the Somali official circles that General Samater was the brain that practically guided the government’s oppressive machinery. In fact, it was General Samater who procured the services of the South African mercenary pilots who were hired to bomb Hargeisa and other northern cities. The destruction, devastation, and the destitution that resulted from that ruthless bombardment are still readily visible in the Somaliland landscape. More importantly, the atrocities that were committed there are vividly engraved in the collective psyche of the people. The mass murders, the lootings, the rape of girls and women, the killing of innocent children, the bombing raids carried out by mercenaries on Hargeisa and vicinity and other towns, including refugees who were fleeing the onslaught, the roundup, the incarceration, the summary executions of scores of intellectuals and community leaders (i.e. the Jazira massacre) could never be erased from memory. These atrocities were committed against innocent civilians simply because they belonged to a distinct social group.

 

These and many other human rights violations that were committed by the Somali military while General Samater was at the helm were also documented by human rights organizations in the United States and the State Department itself. However, unlike many other western democracies, the United States chose to harbor the perpetrators like General Samatar and allowed them to live amidst its citizens with impunity.

 

Unlike the United States, the Canadian government did the honorable thing and willfully guarded itself against these same pitfalls when its parliament passed a legislation that bars senior level officials of governments that are accused of human rights violations to resettle in Canada. We all remember how Toukeh, the former Somali senior military officer, and others of his kind were booted out of Canada when suspicions of human rights violations started to swirl around them.

 

The bigger issue, however, that appears to be lost in the middle of this diabolical and divisive debate which surrounds General Samater’s legal challenge is the overarching human rights situation in Somalia, past and present. We all know that Somalia went through experiences that are pretty much similar to those that were experienced by the people of Rwanda and by the people of Bosnia, during the Bosnian war. The only difference is that the mayhem and the carnage are still continuing in the Somalia situation. In both the Rwandan and the Bosnian conflicts, the international community, under the auspices of the United Nations, spearheaded initiatives that were designed to document and monitor the human rights violations, including the war crimes, that were committed. These initiatives lead to the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994. Both tribunals were set up for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in these countries.

 

Many Somalis believe that General Samater was to Siyad Barre what Radovan Karadzic was to Slobodon Milosevic. Barre and Milosevic are gone. Karadzic is languishing in jail awaiting his fate for his role and participation in the Bosnian genocide. On the other hand, General Samater lives comfortably in suburbia, just outside Washington, D.C. And please do not get me wrong. While General Samater happens to be on the spotlight at the moment, he is not by any means the only person responsible for the atrocities that were committed during the military dictatorship. There are many former senior government officials, many former senior military officers, many who served in the notorious National Security Service (NSS) and others who were implicated in the book by Human Rights Watch and by other international human rights organizations. All of these people are yet to be held responsible for the crimes that they allegedly committed.

 

Unlike Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the international community appears to care less about the human rights violations, including the war crimes, which were committed and continue to be committed in Somalia even as we speak. It is a sign of one more curse that has befallen on the Somali people. This despicable indifference and complacency on the part of the international community reinforces the notion that there are in fact double standards even when it comes to international justice. Why some people’s lives are more valued than others and why some individuals are held accountable for their wicked deeds while others are allowed to operate with impunity is beyond my comprehension.

 

There is more, however, to General Samater’s case than meets the eye. It is a case that is mangled in the so-called new world order where certain governments and nations have legitimized their resolve to conveniently turn the other cheek and intervene only when issues of national interest are involved. In all likelihood General Samater will walk away unscathed from this legal predicament, not because he is innocent of the charges, but because the United States and others who are involved in serious violations of international humanitarian law are determined to make sure that this case does not become a precedent setting case. It is a sad irony that America, a land that was founded by people fleeing oppression, is now protecting the oppressors. It is testament to the moral decline that has become the hallmark of the United States as of late. One wonders what happened to the so-called “land of the brave and the free".

 

To those folks who are crying foul and suggesting that General Samater was targeted because of his social status, you have to remember that, when this same man was the Vice President, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of National Defense, you didn’t say he could not hold these positions because of his social status. It is ludicrous to use that line of defense and it might also be insulting to the General.

 

This lawsuit is indicative of the fact that the Somali people have come of age and that finally our citizenry has the courage and tenacity to seek restitution. It should be seen as an empowerment of sorts for all those who suffered and continue to suffer. Let us hope that this will inspire many other victims whose rights to life, and liberty were denied or violated. Let us also hope that it sends a clear signal to those who are still engaged in human rights violations in Somalia that the era of transgressing with impunity is over.

 

General Samater’s legal predicament is therefore a perfect case of a legitimate search for retribution, not a witch hunt as some have suggested. People who abuse their powers and commit heinous crimes against innocent civilians should be held responsible and should be forced to face the charges against them in a court of law. It is as simple as that.

[GAAROODI]

This is a good blog i found online.

 

Mohamed Ali Samatar Case, A Ring of Classic Scapegoating

February 25th, 2010

 

I rarely respond to articles written in non-Somali medium for two; reasons often those Somalis who choose to write in a language other then Somali are either too young and thus ill schooled in their mother tongue or love to appear too educated for their own and rather converse with non-Somali in Somali matters however a convoluted logic its.

 

Surfing the den of the hyenas as I like to dub it www.widhwidh.com however bitter and clanist their web may appear to those of us who don’t share their Dervish-fantasy and the adulation of their Mad Mullah. Today I came across an article written by a certain Mohamed Ali Shire in most probability a pseudo , in it he claims that the recent Somali history is been rewritten and those he called the victors (a code name probably in reference to the people of Somaliland) are attempting to rewrite the Somali history by labelling Mohamed Ali Samatar a war criminal. Of course, without any evidence he continues to babble and remind us of the great history of the fallen military junta, he also claims with no evidence that the “majority” of the Somali people regard the war criminal as a hero who defended the unity of the Somali nation. The ignorant revisionist Mr Shire omittes nothing in reminding us of the “poor” old general’s humble origin and his humble minority status but he the ill-educated school boy forget his high school persuasion essay format and fail to defend his man with evidence not a lament.

 

The fact he is a member of the minority clans in Somalia amounts to nothing knowing well that he was the second highest ranking in Bare’s dictatorship , what Mr Shire is arguing is not only illogical but its childishly silly, his argument is more driven by his “love of Somalia unity” a disguised anti-Somaliland rehtroics then an evidence for the war criminal’s innocence. In similar manner one can argue simply because women were been discriminated against for so long their abuse of power by one or more should be forgiven because they are simply women! that’s his logic , but the average sane being glers at Mr Shire’s naivety or rather his chosen delusion.

 

General Samatar’s history can’t be rewritten for the obvious reasons that the thousands that perished under his command can’t be revived , Mr Samatar was the head of the army and later a vice-president in a regime well known to commit genocide from as back as the late 1970’s. In fact Mr Shire and his ilk are the one who are attempting to confuse the recent Somali history and the civil war and disguise the military junta’s atrocities as a defence of the Somali unity, what does Somali unity have to do with bombarding civilians and using South African and Namibian mercenaries to reduce Somalia’s second capitals into rubble.

 

The old defenders of the old regime experienced the Somali civil wars and collapse from a golden villa’s , they were the privileged pro-government hunch men and snitches or their young cubs, for them Somalia ended when the regime of their benefactor Afweyne ended, for them Somalia proper was the Somalia of the school of Raage Ugaas who had nothing to do with Somali’s nationalism and yet Somalia under his kinsmen named a school after him , for no other reason then being from their own clan. Mr Shire claims that the Somali history is been rewritten by the victors rather then restored by the later.

 

The Somali history was rewritten by Bare regime begining from his third year in power, old clanist fantasies were regurgetated into the nations history where the Mad Mullah a man who killed more of their kind then any enemy was honoured by a bronze statue not in his birth place (Buhoodle district of Somaliland) but in the capital Magadisho a land where the majority of the natives knew well of his history and reasons of such a revision of history, but for Mr Shire and his like who lived in a dark clanist cave that was the norm and a business as usual. Few of them resist the clanist barvado when the Mad Mullah’s concocted potery is invoked . In 1973 Bare’s regime financed Aw Jaamac Cumar Ciise a fellow kinsmen who directed The Somali Academia Of literature to rewrite the Great White Hope the Mad Mullah in a nationalist ink. Aw Jaamac Cumar Ciise sought to envision his minor sub-clan the people of las canod as the poineers of somali nationalism despite the fact that 98% of his sub-clan opposed the mad men called Devrishes and choose the British side and ualulated when the Dervish were elminated by the majority Somalilanders in 1920 during the battle of Hagoogane in Ethopia led by Xaaji Warsame Bulaale.

 

Finally one shouldn’t abruptly awake the long slumbering hibernating Pro-government cubs less they faint by the facts and figures of the old dead Somalia and pre-Afweyne history. One can oppose Somaliland , but one shouldn’t and can’t use clansit pathology to rewrite history. There was such entity called Somaliland before Somalia , and there was no unified Somali entity , the creation of the former united Somalia was unpaid debt to people of Somaliland who sacrificed their own nationhood for the greater goods of all Somalis, Mr Shire and his kind mistook nationalism and the higher cause of the northerns as naive miscalculations where as his kind created a welfare state for their kinsmen and named schooles after old dead “camelleers” the people of somaliland fasted nearly 2 decades to realize the greater-Somalia dream.

 

Finally , I liked to concluded by stating the obvious history, there were two Somalia that unified in July 1960, no different then Egypt-Syria or Ghana -Burkina Faso union but ultimately all these nations retracted quickly and retraced their footsteps and the same should apply to Somaliland however late it may have been, today Somaliland chose to adhere to the AU principles of keeping and maintaining the colonial boundaries. The somaliland detractors out of desperation accuse Somaliland of catering and wooing the state of Israel in an attempt to manipulate the Somali Islamic bias towards Israel, to that i simply counter Israel is here to stay and its a democratic nation and its people enjoy a freedom and a standard of living higher then that of the pity-oil Sheikdomes, there is no shame in emulating a tiny nation that keeps in check the entire usless Arab world, one can be a Muslim and justable to merits of the Jewish people, but Mr Shire goal isn’t objectivity its rather the opposit.

 

Mr Shire and his minorities in southern Sool should not mistake patience with tenderness of resolve , Somaliland is indivisible along clan lines, if they wish to be part of their clanist enclave Puntland then by all means people move and relocate the land is part of Somaliland. Somali clans occupy all Somali borders within and without, a case that wasn’t advanced by Djbouti a nation for more then 30 years will not be accepted from minor sub-clan in a little dusty outpost called Laas Caanood.

 

You lick your wounds by defending and praising those who the people of Somaliland with justice regard as war criminals, but i assure you that wouldn’t change the fact that Somaliland is her to stay, it stayed prospers and peacefully for twenty years like the mythical phoenix somaliland was begotten by fire not by a an imaginary Dervish nostalgia.

 

CLASSIC......GOOD ARTICLE !

 

born out of the fire like a phoenix not out of day dreams.

[Jacaylbaro]

WAITING TO BE COOKED

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

mala karinaya odayga lol

[Jacaylbaro]

waar ma orgi baaa ,,, looooool

[Kool_Kat]

In odayga lakariyo iska daayee, daqsi agtiisa marayo xataa ma fiirin kartiin! :rolleyes:

 

Mohamed Ali Samatar aloow ku daa, oo cadowgaaga cagta hoosteeda gali!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jacaylbaro]

Gaaroodi u sheeg intaaa ,,,

[The Zack]

Garoodi booto badanaa. Adeer Samatar is enjoying himself at the suburb of Washington D.C., waxaad ka qaadi kartid baa iska yar ee sakiin liq LOOL.

[Jacaylbaro]

I'm sure he is ,,,,,,,

[who-me]

Armaa shanta soo dacwaysay marka counter suing lagu sameeyo ay ka cararan maraykanka...

 

that will be the funniest moment to come...

[Amistad]

GAAROODI, excellent piece, thanks for that !

[Wiil Cusub]

Samatar nin difaacayaa waa nin cadaalad darro iyo dulmi doortay

[Jacaylbaro]

Ninka dadka la gumaadayo u sacabo tumaya sow dembiilayaashana ma difaacayo uun ,,,,,,