|
Somalia Challenges to the Regime
The SRC announced on two occasions that it had discovered
plotters in the act of initiating coup attempts. Both instances
involved SRC members. In April 1970, Qoorsheel, the first vice
president, was arrested and charged with treason. Qoorsheel
represented the more conservative police and army elements and
thus opposed the socialist orientation of the majority of SRC
members. He was convicted of treason in a trial before the
National Security Court and sentenced to a prison term.
In May 1971, the second vice president, Major General
Mahammad Ainanche, and a fellow SRC member, Soviet-trained
Lieutenant Colonel Salah Gaveire Kedie, who had served as head of
the Ministry of Defense and later as secretary of state for
communications, were arrested along with several other army
officers for plotting Siad Barre's assassination. The
conspirators, who had sought the support of clans that had lost
influence in the 1969 overthrow of the democratic regime,
appeared to have been motivated by personal rivalries rather than
by ideology. Accused of conspiring to assassinate the president,
the two key figures in the plot and another army officer were
executed after a lengthy trial.
By 1974 the SRC felt sufficiently secure to release Qoorsheel
and most of the leaders of the democratic regime who had been
detained since the 1969 coup. Igaal and four other former
ministers were excepted from the amnesty, however, and were
sentenced to long prison terms. Igaal received thirty years for
embezzlement and conspiracy against the state.
|
