The new supreme leader of Somalia’s Islamic courts that seized control of Mogadishu this month from a United States-backed warlord alliance said on Monday that Sharia law will be imposed throughout the country.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a controversial hard-line cleric designated a global terrorist by the US, denied the US charges against him but said the courts will work with any country that respects them.
At the same time, he said the courts will respond in kind to any display of disrespect directed at them by outside powers or Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, with which Aweys has extremely strained ties.
”We must follow the rule of law as laid down by Allah,” Aweys told Agence France-Presse in an interview following his election as head of the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) on the weekend.
”I do not think Somalis will oppose the adoption of the rule of Allah,” he said from central Somalia’s Galgudud region, where he has been setting up new Islamic courts for the past several months.
”We will come together by following the commands of God and the teachings of the Qur’an,” Aweys said of cooperation with the transitional government headed by his long-time foe, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
”Those are the principles that will bring us together,” he said. ”By the will of Allah, we will come together.
”We will treat people the way they treat us,” Aweys said. ”If they respect us, we will do the same and respect them. Anyone using bad faith will receive the same treatment.”
Aweys was elected on Saturday to head the CIC, which will have ultimate authority over the coalition of Islamic courts that wrested Mogadishu from the warlord alliance on June 5 after months of bloody fighting.
His appointment, along with the election of a several other conservative clerics to the council, has rekindled fears of a Taliban-like takeover of Somalia, which could become a haven and breeding ground for radical Islam.
The moderate leader of the courts until Aweys’s election, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was chosen as chairperson of the council’s executive committee.
Believed to be in his late 60s, Aweys founded the capital’s first Sharia court in the mid-1990s and is suspected of having orchestrated the Islamic militia’s seizure of the capital.
He has been named a ”specially designated global terrorist” by the US and is subject to US travel and financial sanctions for alleged ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
Those ties, and charges the courts are harbouring extremists including al-Qaeda members, were a key reason Washington backed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism.
Aweys has in the past denied the allegations and on Monday said he did not understand the US terrorist designation and slammed the US for interfering in Somali affairs.
”It makes no sense,” he said. ”The idea of freezing my bank accounts is pointless because I have no accounts in America. What I am going to do in my country has nothing to do with America.
”America is not our God and they are not our leaders,” he said. ”We feel much more superior than America. We are people who believe in Allah. Let them do whatever they want.” — AFP
