As many as 200,000 people were buried in mass graves in the 1980s under Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
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Hargeisa, Somaliland -
Frankincense wafts through the air of a quiet building on the outskirts of
Hargeisa, in the self-declared republic of Somaliland. It masks the odour of
the remains of 38 men, whose skeletons are packed into cardboard boxes.
The tattered containers
will be opened this month with the arrival of a forensics team on February
10. Somaliland officials want to show that the men were victims of a
clan-based killing spree carried out by Somalia's government in the 1980s.
They say as many as
200,000 men, women and children were executed and buried in mass graves. They
accuse Somalia's late dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, of atrocities and want to
put his alleged henchmen on trial.
"Everybody is
missing a relative. Fathers, mothers, brothers, cousins," said Khadar
Ahmed Like, who runs the territory's War Crimes Investigation Commission.
"It is about
getting the perpetrators in court. Unless we learn lessons, heads of state
can do what they want."
This month's
post-mortems mark the latest bid to secure justice for Somaliland's victims.
The atrocities date back to when Somaliland was part of Somalia and governed
by Barre from the capital, Mogadishu.
In the 1980s, his
increasingly authoritarian regime cracked down on the rebel Somalia National
Movement (SNM) and targeted members of the Isaaq clan from northwestern
Somalia who had created the group.
National forces
arrested Isaaq clansmen suspected of having links to the SNM between 1984-88,
commissioners say. Men, women and children were bound and frogmarched to the
edges of towns and executed.
Somalilanders recount
gruesome stories of Isaaq schoolchildren being killed and having their blood
drained to provide transfusions to injured soldiers.
Grisly crackdown
Yusuf Mire, 58, is
still angry about what happened. He points to the amputated stump of his left
arm, where he was shot by Somali national forces during a crackdown in the
central Somaliland town of Burao in 1988.
"My relatives were taken from the house to be slaughtered," he told Al Jazeera. "We want recognition that genocide took place in Somaliland. We will send this to the UN and get the right to be separated from the rest of Somalia."
In 1988, Barre sent
aircraft and troops to the SNM stronghold of Hargeisa, killing more than
40,000 people and reducing the city to rubble. But the campaign backfired and
consolidated the opposition forces, which took Mogadishu in January 1991.
Four months later,
Somaliland broke away from Somalia. While Somalia collapsed into more than
two decades of civil war, Somaliland gradually developed better security, a
livestock trade, its own currency and democratic elections.
Evidence of atrocities
emerged in May 1997, when heavy rains washed away dirt to uncover skeletons
from Hargeisa's mass graves. But efforts to raise the profile of the
atrocities failed to gain traction beyond the isolated region.
"We are now going
to bring this to the international arena," Somaliland's Foreign Minister
Mohamed Bihi Yonis, told Al Jazeera. "The perpetrators are hanging
around, living a normal life. Those who are living in the West, we must go
after them."
This latest drive,
funded by the US-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), saw the 38 bodies exhumed in
September 2012. This month's visit by an eight-person team will study the
skeletons for evidence of systematic killings and will excavate a second
site.
"Hargeisa is a
graveyard," said Jose Baraybar, a forensics expert who manages the team.
"Some say there are 200,000 bodies under the ground. Others say 60,000.
Nobody really knows. That's why we have to get the record straight."
Gathering evidence
They will look for
bindings, close-range headshot wounds and other signs of systematic killing,
said Baraybar, who has worked on probes in Haiti, Bosnia and elsewhere.
Evidence that victims hailed from the same clan could indicate genocide,
rather than mass-murder.
The three-year project
will train locals to unearth Somaliland's 226 known mass graves. The
commission has listed 33 suspects for prosecutions. They include Barre's
son-in-law, Mohamed Said Hirsi, better known as "General Morgan".
But there the project hits
a snag, because Somaliland is not recognised by other countries.
Officials in Hargeisa
lack the clout to push for a UN-backed tribunal, such as those that
prosecuted the criminals of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Legally, Somaliland is
part of Somalia, which has not joined the International Criminal Court.
"They are a long
way from launching prosecutions," said Baraybar. "All of the
killers have left Somaliland - they're in Somalia, the US and Europe.
Prosecution is very difficult for a country that is not a country yet."
Down south in
Mogadishu, there is little appetite for war crimes tribunals - either for
Barre's brutality in Somaliland or any other atrocity that has occurred in
years of violence between rival clans, Islamists and foreign forces.
Like, a 64-year-old
father-of-eight who lived in exile in the 1980s, said the suspects include
members of Somalia's government and parliament - although he declined to
reveal their names for fear of repercussions.
Some live in Somalia,
but others are in Kenya, Europe and the US, he said. Prosecutions must begin
soon because the atrocities started almost 30 years ago, and some of the
masterminds have already died.
"Hargeisa is a graveyard. Some say there are 200,000 bodies under the ground. Others say 60,000. Nobody really knows. That's why we have to get the record straight."- Jose Baraybar, forensics expert
Not all perpetrators
have escaped justice. In 2012, seven Somali victims secured a $21 million
judgement against Mohamed Ali Samantar, a Barre-era prime minister, for
planning the torture and killing of Isaaq clansmen, in a US court.
It was one of three
civil cases that the CJA has helped bring against Somalis who migrated to the
US, using a statute that provides civil remedies for overseas abuses. But
such cases fall short of the criminal tribunal that many in Somaliland want.
'We remember'
The bombing of Hargeisa
and other atrocities cast long shadows across the breakaway region. Few
Somalilanders want to rejoin Somalia, despite recent security gains under a
UN-backed government in Mogadishu.
Somaliland parents tell
their children stories about the cruelties. The cash-strapped government
spends $50,000 on the war crimes commission each year, and is building a
$300,000 museum to showcase skulls and weapons from the bloody era.
"When the former
Somali government controlled the country, many Somaliland people were
killed," said Mohamed Jamal Emil, a 21-year-old who lives in a hut on
the outskirts of Hargeisa. "It was a long time [ago], but we remember.
My parents told me."
Somaliland diplomats
are in talks with counterparts from Mogadishu over long-term autonomy and
independence. The atrocities and prospects for a tribunal could feature in
the negotiations.
For Baraybar, the
war-crimes sleuth, there is more to this probe than the prosecutions it may
yield.
"While
perpetrators die, the dead remain where they are. As long as they remain
where they are, they tell us a story. That story has a healing power. Hearing
that story is the right of those who survived, and of future
generations," he said.
"The grandchild
must know what happened to his grandfather."
Follow
James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl
Source: Al Jaziira
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