Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Abukar Omar Adan, 72, supported the sharia courts' movement during their six-month rule of Mogadishu and most of south Somalia last year. He was detained in neighbouring Kenya after allied Ethiopian and Somali government troops drove out the courts at the New Year, scattering fighters and supporters.
In February, Kenya dropped an immigration case against Adan without explanation, and this weekend he showed up in Djibouti where Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi flew in an effort to bring him back to his homeland.
"He was not of the (Islamic) courts, he supported them morally and financially in the beginning," Adan's aide told Reuters by telephone from Djibouti. "But when they turned more destructive and uncompromising, he withdrew his support."
He added: "If the courts still stand for good things, he will support them, and if the government changes its tune and stands for good things, he will support them."
Adan's dialogue with Gedi came as the government seeks to shore up its power-base in Mogadishu against an Islamist-led insurgency resulting in daily attacks on government and Ethiopian positions.
Several senior Islamists, meanwhile, are in Eritrea at a conference of Somali opposition figures intending to produce a new umbrella movement to press for the Ethiopians' exit.
The aide said Adan, who ships commodities such as sugar and building materials to Somalia, would stay in Djibouti.
"He's not going to Asmara, Addis Ababa or Mogadishu."
In the latest violence in and around Mogadishu on Monday night, a grenade was hurled at a legislator's house, and police said three civilians died in gunfire after a roadside bomb targeted a military convoy carrying government soldiers.
In the provincial city of Baidoa, a gang stabbed to death a government soldier, police said.
Somalia's 9 million people have endured near-ceaseless conflict and instability since warlords toppled a military dictator in 1991.
Source: Reuters, Sept 11, 2007