Mohammad Ali Samatar

In May and June 1988 Somali government forces crushed Hargeisa, the main city of the Isaaq-inhabited northwest, with air strikes and ground assaults. Samatar, then defence minister and first vice president, was identified as the official who directly supervised the attack and commanded the units used in indiscriminate attacks on civilians. A 1989 US State Department report concluded that the attack killed 5,000 civilians. In what became known as the Isaaq genocide, mass killings, abductions, systematic rape, arbitrary detention and torture were recorded across northwestern Somalia.

After the Barre regime was overthrown in 1991, Samatar fled via Italy to the United States. In the early 2000s Isaaq victims living in the United States brought a civil suit against him, and in 2004 he was served with the complaint at his home in Fairfax, Virginia. He claimed immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but in 2010 the US Supreme Court held unanimously that the act does not govern a foreign official's claim of immunity, allowing the suit to proceed. In 2011 the federal district court denied his motion to dismiss, holding that foreign official immunity does not extend to violations of jus cogens norms, and in August 2012 the federal court ordered him to pay 21 million dollars in damages. In 2015 the Supreme Court let the civil suit against him stand and rejected his appeal. Some supporters called the suit political revenge by figures linked to the Somali National Movement (SNM), and at trial the plaintiffs did not claim that Samatar had personally committed or been directly involved in the atrocities. They claimed that they had suffered physical abuse in violation of international law at the hands of soldiers or government officials under his command.