Somalia crisis: Defence minister Fiqi threatens opposition as ex-spy chief Sanbalolshe alleges Hassan Sheikh Mohamud ordered June 3 ‘killing plot’

By the time Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi boarded his plane out of Beledweyne on Saturday, militia fighters from a rival clan had already moved to encircle the airstrip. He escaped. The political fallout did not.

Fiqi’s remarks – that Somalia’s opposition leaders were alive solely because President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had chosen to spare them – detonated across a country already teetering on the edge of renewed conflict. Within hours, former intelligence chief Abdullahi Mohamed Ali Sanbalolshe had issued a sweeping public rebuttal, alleging that the defence minister’s words were not a threat but a confession: that the government had planned on June 3 to kill him, former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, and more than sixty clan elders assembled at a single compound in Mogadishu.

Somalia’s constitutional crisis – already the most volatile the country has faced in years – had just become something more dangerous.

“Lucky to Be Alive”: The Remarks That Ignited a Nation

Fiqi delivered his statement in Beledweyne, the Hiran regional capital that serves as both his constituency and Sanbalolshe’s political stronghold. He was responding to an interview the former spy chief had given earlier in the week – footage that spread rapidly across Somali social media, drawing millions of views and triggering anger from authorities.

In that interview, Sanbalolshe alleged that President Mohamud had personally ordered an assault on a compound on June 3 where he, Khaire, and over sixty clan leaders – including the Murursade Ugas – were gathered. The attack, he said, was designed to kill them all in one place. He added that had the president possessed warplanes, he would have bombed the compound without hesitation.

Fiqi’s rebuttal was blunt and unsparing: the opposition should consider themselves fortunate to be breathing. Their survival, he said, was an act of presidential mercy – and nothing more.

For opposition leaders listening, the message was unambiguous. It was not a denial of “murderous” intent. It was, in their reading, an acknowledgement of it.

Sanbalolshe Responds: “This Is Proof, Not a Threat”

Sanbalolshe answered in a long statement on Facebook on Saturday. He did not treat Fiqi’s words as an aberration. He treated them as evidence.

The defence minister’s remarks, he wrote, were not new – they were confirmation of what he had already alleged: that the government had planned, on June 3, to kill him, Khaire, and the assembled clan leaders in a single, coordinated strike. The attack on the compound had triggered two days of intense fighting between federal government troops and opposition forces across Mogadishu in early June, clashes that left the capital shaken and the political situation irreparably damaged.

Sanbalolshe – once among President Mohamud’s most trusted allies – was categorical: neither he nor the broader opposition would be broken by the threat of death. They would not be driven into submission before a president whose legitimate term, he said, had already expired on May 15. Mohamud, he warned, would not be forgiven. If the president did not issue a genuine apology and reverse course, accountability would come – however long it took.

Beledweyne: Where Words Became Movement

The consequences of Fiqi’s remarks were not confined to Facebook. In Beledweyne, clan militias affiliated with Sanbalolshe moved swiftly to surround the defence minister and block his departure. Fiqi managed to board his aircraft and return to Mogadishu before the situation escalated into direct confrontation. But Mawisley clan militia leaders made their position clear: the threats would not be forgotten.

The episode illustrated, with stark precision, how rapidly political rhetoric in Somalia translates into armed posturing – and how thin the line remains between a war of words and a return to open warfare.

The Constitutional Fault Line Beneath It All

Every exchange in this crisis – every threat, every counter-allegation, every militia movement – flows from a single unresolved rupture: the expiry of both the president’s and parliament’s terms, weeks ago, without an agreed path to elections.

The federal government and the opposition remain fundamentally at odds over how a presidential election should be conducted, and when. That deadlock produced the violence of early June. And unless it is resolved, it will produce something worse.

With militia commanders issuing warnings, a former intelligence chief accusing the head of state of ordering assassinations, and a defence minister telling opponents they owe their lives to executive restraint, Somalia’s political crisis has entered a phase that leaves little room for the diplomatic language of de-escalation.

The government had issued no formal response to Sanbalolshe’s allegations by the time of publication.

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