Who Assassinated The Somali President In October 1969?

The clan concept and the assassination

It is difficult to determine the exact nature of the assassination. The dominant assumption is that President Abdirashid was “killed” due to an intractable clan rivalry over state power between contesting clan-based élites. The clan has always been the determinant element in explaining the assassination. Many an author who deliberated on the assassination has contended that the clan was the reason and has concluded that the culprit was none other than the assassin who was assumed to have been a policeman—even a bodyguard by some accounts—dispatched to the president’s security.²⁵ Framed as a consequence of a Majeerteen clan power struggle, the traditional clan rivalry was apparently exploited to cover the assassination, so much so that the identity of the culprit and the actual crime were portrayed as a business as usual in the Somali world.²⁶ A group of interconnected politicians from the Mohamoud Saleebaan/Majeerteen clan, averse to the president’s policies of appeasing the Isaaq clan-group elites (who had felt marginalized in the previous Aden Adde administration), were also accused of orchestrating the assassination.

The fact that the assassin belonged to the Majeerteen, the president’s clan, though a different subclan (Ali Saleebaan), which was a rival of the Abdirashid’s Osman Mohamoud subclan, gives the assassination a clan flavor. The Ali Saleebaan, known for their entrepreneurial skills, had traditionally been marginalized by the Osman Mohamoud, for whom they held a deep-rooted hostility.²⁷ By killing Abdirashid, the assassin was reported to have avenged his subclan by getting rid of the most elder statesman of the rival clan. The murder was seen as a “payment” for the loss of the assassin’s subclan during the violence that sprang from the turbulent election of March 26, 1969, which saw the marginalization of Ali Saleebaan political players by their Osman Mohamoud counterparts. It was a well-known fact that the Ali Saleebaan political players complained about the result of the election, which the Osman Mohamoud politicians rigged by taking the two parliamentary seats that were supposed to be divided between the president’s and the assassin’s subclans. The Ali Saleebaan politicians, enraged at how Abdirashid and his administration handled the election, were expected to retaliate. The place in which the assassination was carried out also served as an excuse for those who had planned it. The town of Laas Aanood was the most violent voting center during the election, with the death of eleven civilians.²⁸

It is important to discuss clan as a theory and practice. The lexicon of clan agency that first attributed Abdirashid’s assassination to a particular clan and then to a subclan originated from an official state communication of the security authorities. Apparently shocked by the assassination, the security authorities resorted to the clan concept in their first conversation on the murder. To alert the assassination to more senior authorities, the regional police commissioner, Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Saqadhi Dubbad, an Isaaq (considering the hierarchical structure of the army and the police forces), called first the central police headquarters and second the central army headquarters in Hargeysa, responsible for the whole security situation of the northern part of the country. In his last contact with the army, Dubbad’s telegram was responded to by Lieutenant Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the deputy of the northern army sector. Upon hearing the information that the president was “killed,” Abdullahi Yusuf, a Majeerteen/Mohamoud Saleebaan/Omar Mohamoud, hurriedly asked Dubbad to which clan the assassin belonged. Dubbad replied, “Oh, a Majeerteen man.”²⁹ The crime was thus depicted as a business-as-usual traditional activity, a clan matter carried out by one clan member against another. Both Saqadhi and Yusuf—the respondent and the inquirer—propagated that premise, at least in the beginning. Convinced of the report he had received, Yusuf called his senior army officers and passed along the information. What both colonels left out was the crucial issue of whether or not the assassin was a government employee—in this case, a policeman.

The assassin, Said Orfano, contrary to popular claims, was neither a bodyguard nor a real policeman, even though he was given a uniform and had enlisted in the police force before the assassination. He joined the Dervish forces, a branch of the police named after the anticolonial Dervish movement of Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, known as the “Mad

Mullah.” Orfano was registered in the police record as Abdulkadir Abdi Mohamed by General Mohamed Abshir Muuse, the former commissioner of the national police, who helped him as a fellow-clansman to secure a government paycheque. But he was not included in the official police team assigned to the president’s security detail. However, the very fact that the assassin was trained in the police raises suspicion. Tellingly, General Abshir was among several fellow clansmen accused of the assassination.³⁰ In his memoir, even though he mentioned that Abshir was a suspect, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf insisted without offering any evidence that he was certain that Barre was the main culprit and conductor of the assassination.³¹ In describing the assassination as a “killing,” Colonel Yusuf did not consider the bigger picture by linking the murder to the contemporary realpolitik of the Cold War. In his analysis of the politics of murder in postcolonial Somalia, Somali psychiatrist Hussein Bulhan also charged Barre for orchestrating the assassination.³²

The sudden execution of the assassin by the subsequent Barre military regime closed the door on further investigation of the case.³³ Why was the whole investigation processed so quickly? By making his confessions confidential, the regime blocked the possibility of running the risk of linking the inner circle of Barre to the assassination. It was clear that there was a need for a guilty murderer in the form of clan. One crucial piece of evidence, though by no means the only one, that links Barre to the assassination can be found in the regime’s official bulletin. Upon coming to power, Barre selectively promoted the two policemen, Lieutenant Beddel Hersi Farah and Lieutenant Abdi Raabi Raage, who were accused by the assassin of participating in a hybrid assassination plot.³⁴ Beddel Hersi and Abdi Raabi were among five individuals—the other three being the assassin’s brother, Mohamed Yusuf Ismail, Sheikh Nuruddin Ali Olow, and Ainab Farah Maraf—with whom the assassin told the court he had plotted. All of them were released on the account that the assassin had retracted his earlier statements.³⁵ However, the presidential decrees reveal that generous rewards by Barre for Hersi continued throughout the regime.³⁶ This stands as evidence of the special relationship between Barre and some of those accused of assisting the assassin. How those suspected of the assassination were allowed to live freely remains a mystery.

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