Top cop denies genocide claim
2005-10-18 11:09
Stockholm - A Somali police chief and former militia commander was arrested on Monday on suspicions of war crimes after attending a conference in Sweden, police and organisers said.
Abdi Hassan Awale, was arrested after Somalis in the Nordic country recognised him and reported him to police, said Gillian Nilsson, an organiser of the conference.
Awale, also known as Abdi Qeybdiid, was the commander of warlord Farah Aidid's troops that fought American peacekeepers in Mogadishu in the early 1990s.
One of those confrontations in 1993 was featured in the book and movie Black Hawk Down, and left 18 United States soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead.
Police spokesperson Karl Sandberg would not confirm the suspect's identity, but said he was arrested on Monday at a hotel in Lund and was brought to the west coast city of Goteborg to be questioned.
Sandberg said the 57-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of genocide, although police did not specify what crimes he had allegedly committed.
Suspect being questioned
Police in Goteborg questioned him on Monday, said his lawyer, Pieter Kjessler.
"He claims that the accusations are false," Kjessler told Swedish public radio.
Kjessler said the interrogation was interrupted because the suspect did not trust the translator who was provided and demanded to meet members of the delegation that he travelled to Sweden with.
Somalia was thrown into civil war and anarchy after clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. More than 500 000 people have been killed and some 3.5 million have been driven from their homes, 1.5 million of whom have taken refuge in neighbouring countries.
Awale, who was a colonel in Somalia's former army, was named interior minister in the former unrecognised government that was declared in the capital after Barre's ouster.
US troops launched an attack on Awale's home on July 12 1993, from which he escaped unharmed - though 54 other people were killed.
He later joined the militia led by warlord Osman Ali Ato.
A complicated legal issue
The interior minister in Somalia's divided government appointed him as the national police chief, but the prime minister named another person to the same position.
Police spokesperson Mats Glansberg said prosecutors have until Thursday to decide whether to ask a court to keep the man detained. He said it was unclear whether a foreign citizen suspected of genocide can stand trial in a Swedish court, or whether he would be extradited to an international tribunal.
Glansberg said. "We have to clarify this legal situation. It may be more complicated than investigating the actual charges."
The news of Awale's arrest was welcomed by some Somalis living abroad.
"We were joyous to hear this," said Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Advocacy Centre in St Paul, Minnesota. "It sends a loud and clear message to all the other Somali war criminals."
- AP