The Rebirth Of Somaliland (15): Crimes Against Humanity In Somaliland

[Deeq A.]

By Dr. Hussein Mohamed Nur
Who were the culprits?
Crimes against humanity are deliberate acts taken as part of a systematic campaign that accuses human suffering or death on a large scale. Crimes against humanity are any specific acts deliberately committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian or against an identifiable part of a civilian population.
For the first time between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Nuremberg trials were held for prosecutions of war criminals (the prosecutions of prominent Nazi Germany politicians, political, judicial and economic leadership). However, recently the International Court of Justice (ICJ) made prosecutions through the International Criminal Tribunal and International Court of Justice for the former Yugoslavia.
The law of crimes against humanity has primarily developed through the evolution of customary international law. Unlike war crimes and genocide, crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention as yet. But there is currently an on-going international effort to establish a treaty. This is led by an initiative on crimes against humanity. The crimes against humanity include torture, extermination, prosecution, ethnic cleansing against identified groups on political, racial, ethnic, national grounds etc.
In the 1980s crimes against humanity, acts were committed in a widespread manner and systematic attacks against the civilian population in Somaliland. The acts took place before and during the eruption of the war in the North (Somaliland). As many as 50,000 (though other estimates show that about 200,000 civilians – men, women, elderly and children) were killed indiscriminately. “Almost everybody is missing a relative”, as remarked by the Chairman of the Somaliland Investigation of War Crimes Commission (WCIC), Kadar Ahmed ‘Like’.

The conflict in the North formally ended when Somaliland withdrew from its union with Somalia. But the perpetrators and culprits (war criminals) who committed the heinous crimes against humanity are still at large at the present. Though many of the officers of the previous dictatorial regime were killed in fighting in the North, others are alive either in exile as refugees like the brutal Colonel Awes Geddow (who shelled Hargeisa mercilessly) ‘the destroyer of Hargeisa’ and General Mohamed Said Hersi ‘Morgan’, ‘the butcher of Hargeisa,. General Mohamed Ali Samatar, the ‘architect and destructor’ of the North, passed away recently in the USA (buried in Mogadishu’s Defence Headquarters). Colonel Mohamed Ali Barre ‘Canjeex’, the executioner of more than 50 young professionals and students at the Gezira beach (previous part), is still changing domiciliary homes and residential countries in the diaspora (Kenya, Syria, lately Saudi Arabia etc.). Colonel Yusuf Ali ‘Tuke’, ‘the butcher of Gabiley and Arabsiyo’ in the 1980s, resides in the USA and waiting for prosecution the same pattern as General Samatar.
Many others are known to have been involved in massacres and directing genocidal acts of civilians well before and during the conflict in the north. They are now being haunted by the nightmares of their past inhumane crimes and genocidal histories.

General Mohamed Ali Samatar, a long time fugitive war-criminal, was identified by US citizens, the plaintiffs, of Somaliland origin who managed to bring him to the law and successfully prosecuted him in the US Court of Justice, the case of (Yousuf v Samatar) which had a long-term history in the US courts having went through battles in all the courts of the US, i.e., District Court, the court of Appeals and finally through to the Supreme Court.
The case was initiated in 2010, in accordance with the Federal Law. The Court of Justice informed the defendant that he could only appeal to the General Defence Law of the country. After fighting the case for a considerable length of time, Samatar finally buckled and gave up accepting liability before Judge Leonie Brinkema, a US Federal Judge, for torture, extra-judicial killing, war crimes, and other human rights abuses committed against the civilian population during the regime of Siyad Barre. The lawsuit was finally concluded in the US Courts.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the lead Democratic sponsor of the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) spoke in support of upholding the importance of the human rights law and, therefore, to bring any other suspect with regards to this issue to court. Apart from Bashe Abdi Yusuf (Bashe Abdi yare) and his colleagues, there still are other surviving culprits of the widespread and systematic campaign of human rights violations carried out under the General’s tenure in office.

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