Who Assassinated The Somali President In October 1969?

The trial and the truth

During the short, swift trial, a witness named Farah Warsame Ali told the court that one of the accused, Ainab Farah Maraf, promised the assassin in September 1969 “a substantial sum of money” if he carried out the assassination plot.³⁷ The defendant confessed to the court that he was promised a massive amount of money once he assassinated the president. Exactly 40,000 Somali shillings were deposited to the assassin’s brother, while another 50,000 would be supplied after the assassination. The plot, as previously planned, was to murder the president in Mogadishu, but the assassin told the court that the idea of the assassination itself came from Sheikh Nuruddin Ali Olow, his fellow subclansman, and other accused men.³⁸ Olow told Orfano that once he assassinated Abdirashid he would defend him in court. The court heard that while Beddel Hersi encouraged Orfano in carrying out the crime by assisting him in Bur’o, Abdi Raabi was tasked to spread antagonistic propaganda against the president. As the commander of the Bur’o police station, Raabi also transferred the assassin from Bur’o to Laas Aanood and recorded in the police book that he sent Orfano on a “special mission.”³⁹ Beddel encouraged the assassin to empty all his cartridges in the president’s body and be sure to exclaim that it was “an accident.”⁴⁰ The court heard that Beddel supervised the whole operation, directing the would-be assassin where to stand and from where to shoot. He also berated the assassin for missing a previous chance to kill the president at the municipal headquarters in Laas Aanood.

Wherever the president visited, Orfano followed him with the help of the local police authorities. Whether Orfano and collaborators acted on higher orders was a question they would have answered if they were called by the court, which they were not. The transfer of the court hearing to Mogadishu could also be part of the plot. The subsequent military rulers who took power five days after the assassination preferred the capital so to limit witnesses’ accounts. Even though the town of Bur’o had the legal jurisdiction for the case, the transfer of the court hearing to the capital Mogadishu “for security reasons” meant that justice had been compromised behind the scenes. One of the living judges of the court admitted that there was a political plot in the assassination.⁴¹ The fact that the head of the new politico-military court in Mogadishu was Colonel (later General) Mohamed Sheikh Osman, one of the staunch loyalists of Barre, also reveals how the final judgment of the court was reached within the inner circle. Similarly, the prosecutor of the case, Mohamoud Mire Muuse, was a trusted member of the military junta.

To show that the president’s murder was not a matter of national urgency but a clan issue, a small committee consisting exclusively of the Osman Mohamoud subclan represented by Abdi Farah Baashane and Hersi Osman Keenidiid was assigned days before the coup to investigate the assassination.⁴² This made the whole thing clanized and discouraged other witnesses to emerge. However, in pleading guilty the assassin mentioned no clan during the deliberation of the court. Nor did he utter a clan name in euphemistic terms, as was customary when clan terms were used in courts. When asked by the court judge for his motivations, Orfano articulated a geopolitical language laden with a Cold War politics. He confessed to the court that he shot Abdirashid because the president and his prime minister deceived “the nation” by signing a memorandum of understanding with Westgate Mall siege in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013. In recent weeks, they have carried out a spate of attacks in Kenya, a truce that neutralized the hostilities over the territorial claims between the two countries in 1967.

From a legal point of view, it is clear that the criminal court did not consider the assassin’s testimonies and decided not to call witnesses to hear other versions. Though he was not directly involved in the court proceedings, the president of the Supreme Court had to resign during the hearings due to the heavy interference of the Barre regime. One of the first official regime bulletins features his resignation, with Barre accepting it immediately. More revealingly, as is evident from the official bulletin, the Osman Mohamoud clan prosecutor who had been investigating the case was arrested and then suspended from the magistrate service.⁴³ By contrast, the court documents also show the assassin’s lawyer, Abdiaziz Nur Hersi, a known Marxist and close friend of Abdirizak, arguing that his client deserved a prize—even a historical medal—for the murder he had committed. Despite such powerful political rhetoric, rather than a legal contention in defending the assassin, Abdiaziz was soon promoted to a member of the Barre’s first cabinet on the very eve of the coup.

Outside the courtyard, the public pointed to Abdirizak Haji Hussein the prime minister of the preceding administration. Abdirizak, who had more than once agitated for the assassination of the president, was also accused of involvement. A contemporary political eyewitness, Ahmed Mohamed Sillanyo, who was later to lead Somaliland, recalled that months before the assassination, Abdirizak declared at his party Dabka (fire) headquarters in Maka AlMukaramah Street in Mogadishu that Abdirashid should know that “the no. 1 car can be exploded.”⁴⁴ The number one was the president’s car number plates. Subsequently, after the coup, while others were immediately detained outside in Afgooye, Barre and his loyalists initially put Abdirizak under house arrest. When most of his fellow former political players and peers were languishing either in detention without trial or given minor posts in the regime, Abdirizak was awarded the most lucrative political position given to a politician of the old civilian political establishment. Barre sent him to New York as his ambassador to the United Nations, a position he held until early 1980.⁴⁵ This indicates an earlier connection between Barre and Abdirizak, the main outspoken critic of Abdirashid and his administration.

Abdirizak freely admitted many years later that he was delighted on hearing that the military took over power five days after the assassination. In an interview with the Horn of Africa radio in Mogadishu, he contemplatively recalled how—after his housemaid passed the news of the coup to him—he became pleased that the widowed administration was overthrown.⁴⁶ In another interview he gave to Hiiraan Online shortly before his death, Abdirizak maintained that he had not been part of the plot.⁴⁷ Interestingly, he ascribed the assassination to a clan vendetta, insisting that the assassination was a clan-motivated act and that Orfano was acting on his own with respect to his subclan grievances. To exonerate himself from any involvement, Abdirizak remarked that the assassin gave a full confession, claiming that “when the man was brought to court, he insisted that no one else [except him] was complicit.”⁴⁸ Contrary to Abdirizak’s claims, Orfano himself first confessed to the court that five individuals, who had mentioned to him the name of Abdirizak, helped him carry out the assassination. The assassin also told the court that Abdirizak’s name was raised several times by the accomplices, but he admitted that he neither saw nor heard of Abdirizak personally. Without sufficient evidence, the court did not call Abdirizak or charge him as a potential suspect in the first court hearing.

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