Mogadishu, Somalia, July 28 (AFP) – Former warlords occupying the Somali presidential office in Mogadishu on Thursday handed over the facility to the increasingly powerful Islamic courts, which have started to take control of government properties.
The bullet-marked office compound, known as “Villa Somalia” in southern Mogadishu, was home to presidents from 1960 to 1991, when it was seized by warlord Mohamed Farah Aidiid after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled.
Earlier this month the Islamists routed warlord Hussein Aidiid, also deputy prime minister in the fledgling Somali government, from the compound which he took over when his father was killed in 1995.
Abdirahman Janakow, deputy chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, which controls much of southern Somalia, said there was “great significance for the Islamic courts to take over of the last stronghold of the warlords”.
“The facility has been handed over to the Islamic courts peacefully and in an orderly manner. It is a great achievement of Allah and the work of honest Islamic personalities,” he added, speaking to former commanders loyal to the defeated warlords.
On July 12, the Islamists took control of the main seaport and airport in Mogadishu and demanded that all government property be turned over to them, as they consolidated their grip on areas they control.
Somalia has had no functioning central authority since 1991. In the past 16 years of violence and chaos, warlords seized control of government buildings and property.
A transitional government, set up in neighbouring Kenya in 2004 and now based in the town of Baidoa northwest of Mogadishu for security reasons, has been wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over much of the country.
It has watched warily as the Islamists have moved to fill the power vacuum, defeating the US-backed warlords in months of bloody fighting, extending its reach and imposing strict sharia law in areas it controls.
Source: AFP, July 28, 2006
