Mohammad Ali Samatar

Early years

Samatar was born in 1931 in Somalia. He was born in Kismayo in southern Somalia.

For his post-secondary education, Samatar studied at the Frunze Military Academy in the former Soviet Union (Военная академия им. М. В. Фрунзе), an elite institution reserved for the most qualified officers of the Warsaw Pact armies and their allies.

Somali Democratic Republic

A Lieutenant General in the Somali National Army (SNA), Samatar was a key figure in Somali politics throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the Ogaden campaign of the late 1970s, he led all SNA units and their Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) affiliates. He also served as national Defense Minister from 1980 to 1986.

Samatar was a member of President Siad Barre's ruling Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC). In May 1986, Barre suffered serious injuries in a life-threatening automobile accident near Mogadishu, when the car that was transporting him smashed into the back of a bus during a heavy rainstorm. He was treated in a hospital in Saudi Arabia for head injuries, broken ribs and shock over a period of a month. Samatar, who was then serving as Vice President, subsequently served as de facto head of state for the next several months. Although Barre managed to recover enough to present himself as the sole presidential candidate for re-election over a term of seven years on December 23, 1986, his poor health and advanced age led to speculation about who would succeed him in power. Possible contenders included his son-in-law General Ahmed Suleiman Abdille, who was at the time the Minister of the Interior, in addition to Barre's Vice President Lt. Gen. Samatar.

From February 1, 1987, to September 3, 1990, Samatar was the national Prime Minister, the first person to fill that post since Barre abolished the position upon seizing power in 1969.

Ogaden War

In the late 1970s, Samatar was the Chief Commanding Officer of the Somali National Army during the Ogaden Campaign. He and his frontline deputies faced off against their mentor and former Frunze alumni Marshal Vasily Ivanovich Petrov, who was assigned by the USSR to advise the Ethiopian Army, in addition to 15,000 Cuban troops supporting Ethiopia, led by General Arnaldo Ochoa. The Ogaden Campaign was part of a broader effort to unite all of the Somali-inhabited territories in the Horn region into a Greater Somalia (Soomaaliweyn). General Samatar was assisted in the offensive by several field commanders, most of whom were also Frunze graduates:

Lawsuit

Following the outbreak of the civil war in 1991 and the collapse of the Barre regime, Samatar moved to the United States in order to escape persecution as a member of the former government. According to Mario Sica, then Italian ambassador to Mogadishu, although the United Somali Congress (USC) professed that it was fighting against the Barre regime as a whole and not engaged in a clan-based struggle, public officials who belonged to the same clan as the USC's core constituents were not targeted. Instead, they were embraced as heroes and welcomed into the rebel group's senior leadership positions.

In 2009, a civil lawsuit seeking financial damages from Samatar was filed in the U.S. by a small group of Somalis, some of whom are naturalized American citizens. The individuals alleged that they had suffered physical abuse in violation of international law at the hands of soldiers or other government officials under Samatar's command, which they further claimed was due to their belonging to the Isaaq clan. However, the plaintiffs did not claim that Samatar personally committed the atrocities or that he was directly involved. Supporters of Samatar described the lawsuit as a politically motivated vendetta filed by associates of the Somali National Movement (SNM),,,, a disbanded rebel militia linked with the secessionist Somaliland region in the northwestern part of Somalia.

Samatar asserted that he was immune from responsibility under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. On June 1, 2010, in Samantar v. Yousuf, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that, although Samatar's argument was "literally possible," FSIA did not cover the issue of an official's claim to immunity. The lawsuit was consequently allowed to continue against Samatar. However, the justices added that Samatar might have recourse to common law claims of immunity when the matter was heard again by the lower courts. On remand, Samatar sought dismissal of the action based on head of state immunity and foreign official act immunity. In 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia rejected these claims, denying the motion to dismiss. It ruled that "under international and domestic law, officials from other countries are not entitled to foreign official immunity for jus cogens violations, even if the acts were performed in the defendant's official capacity." In August 2012, a U.S. federal court ruled that Samatar should pay $21 million to the plaintiffs, with each to receive $1 million and $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages, respectively. However, Samatar was not required to pay the damages until bankruptcy proceedings concluded. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit later upheld this decision in November 2012. This was despite the fact that US President Barack Obama's administration had urged the court not to hear the lawsuit.

In March 2013, Abdi Farah Shirdon, Prime Minister in Somalia's newly recognized Federal Government, issued a letter to the U.S. Department of State requesting that Washington grant Samatar immunity from prosecution. Samatar was previously denied immunity mainly because there was at the time no strong central authority within Somalia to claim it on his behalf. According to Samatar's attorney, Joseph Peter Drenan, the gesture was an attempt on the Somali government's part to promote reconciliation. He added that the lawsuit was now likely to be dismissed, as the U.S. authorities were expected to honor the Somali administration's request. In March 2015, the US Supreme Court upheld the civil lawsuit against Samatar, dismissing his appeal.

Death

Samatar died in Virginia, United States, on 19 August 2016.