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IRIN Webspecial: A Decent Burial
Interview: Maj-Gen Muhammad Gani
General Gani voting at the Arta peace conference
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During the Djibouti-hosted peace talks in Arta, IRIN interviewed Maj-Gen Muhammad Gani, former sectoral commander in northwestern Somalia under Muhammad Siyad Barre. Gani, along with General Muhammad Sa'id Hirsi Morgan, has been repeatedly accused by Somalilanders of human rights abuses, presiding over a security machine which perpetrated arrests, detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings of civilians.
The Somaliland administration boycotted talks which it said included "known war criminals". IRIN put the charges to Gani.
QUESTION: The Somaliland administration has boycotted Arta, because, it says, you, among others, are war criminals and should not be attending.
ANSWER: If there is anybody - me or anybody else - who are war criminals [pause]. I am not someone who is running away from a crime I have committed against the Somali people. And it's up to the Somali people and their government to do something about anyone accused of committing crimes against their people. I don't see myself as a war criminal, and I'm not running from anything that I've supposedly done.
Q: Do you think the new government should address crimes committed under Muhammad Siyad Barre's regime and the civil war?
A: I don't believe that in this transitional period it is something that this government can address. But I believe that after the transitional period, the new Somali government will be able to deal with it. It can do two things: either it can set up a truth and reconciliation conference like South Africa to find out what happened, or it can chose to prosecute anyone accused of committing crimes.
Q: You are accused of killings and human rights abuses in the northwest. How do you see that time?
A: The human rights you are talking about [pause]. Anyone can accuse anyone of violations. But human rights - I was a soldier, I was defending a country. I was defending that country from a guerrilla movement that was backed by the Ethiopian government. I had obligations to protect the territorial integrity of Somalia, and I was defending my borders. If you are going to call that action human rights abuses, I don't know what to say. I don't believe I have committed any human rights abuses... And I want to ask you a question: Don't you think that what Europeans and Americans did in Africa are human rights abuses? If you want to talk about human rights abuses, let's talk about that.
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IRIN gratefully acknowledges the support of Africa Online in developing this WebSpecial.
? 2001, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. All rights reserved.
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