MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – Somalia’s National Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Committee (NAMLC) on Tuesday 13 October added former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen of South West State, General Mahad Abdirahman Adan “Taliye Shub” and eight other men to the national list of persons it says finance or support al-Shabaab. Banks and every other institution in the country must now freeze their assets, refuse them any transaction and report their activity to the Financial Reporting Center. The notice, reference GQKL/LMA/004/2026, gives a name and, for four of the ten, an alias. In December the NAMLC listed eight al-Shabaab leaders with their years of birth, their posts inside the group and the crimes it charged them with.
Ten Names on NAMLC Reference 004/2026
The committee published the decision on its own website in Somali, under the heading of the national targeted financial sanctions list, and the notice dated 13 October cites Article 6 of the targeted financial sanctions law, Article 7 of its regulations on freezing funds and Article 4 of the anti-money laundering law on reporting duties. It says the NAMLC was satisfied that sufficient lawful grounds existed for the listing. Somali citizens and entities are barred from any financial dealing with the ten, and anyone who breaks the order faces enforcement under the counter-terrorism laws. The notice describes the men collectively as linked to al-Shabaab, working with it or financing it, and says nothing about any one of them.
The table attached to the notice lists ten men: Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed “Laftagareen”, Hassan Abdulkadir Mohamed, Mahad Abdirahman Adan “Shub”, Ibrahim Adan Ali “Najah”, Hassan Abdi Mohamed “Ugaas Hassan”, Abdullahi Ali Watiin, Abdifatah Mahad Abdirahman, Abdimajid Mowlid Hassan, Amiin Mad Daruur and Abshir Aden Isak. No row carries a date of birth, a nationality, an address, a document number or a role. No row states what money moved, through whom, or when.
On 16 January the same committee posted the list it had issued against al-Shabaab’s leadership, the second since the targeted sanctions law was approved, and it named eight men. Bashir Abdirahman Handule, born 1950, was entered as commander of the group’s forces and chairman of its military council; Abdullahi Hassan Abdi Osoble “Wadaad”, born 1967, as head of its finance office; Abdullahi Moalim Gedow as former zakat emir and head of its Puntland front. Each of the eight carried a paragraph setting out what the NAMLC accused him of, from extortion of traders to death sentences handed down in the group’s courts.
The NAMLC was set up under Article 24 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act of 2016. It is chaired by the finance minister, the director of the Financial Reporting Center serves as its secretary, and its members are the ministers of justice, internal security and commerce, the governor of the Central Bank, the attorney general and the director general of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA).
Laftagareen’s Camp on the List
Laftagareen led South West State from 2018 until 30 March, when federal forces entered Baidoa and he announced he would stand down. The state assembly elected President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe by 88 votes to one on 10 June, and Laftagareen still claims the presidency. On 30 August President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe’s cabinet resolved to deal with his camp as a terrorist group, and on 7 September federal officials were weighing asset freezes and passport withdrawals against him with the finance and internal security ministries, the police, the immigration agency and the anti-money laundering committee. The NAMLC notice followed five weeks later, and it covers the financial measures only.
Hassan Abdi Mohamed, the fifth name, is Ugaas Hassan, the spokesman who returned in September as information minister in the cabinet Laftagareen announced on 18 September with no decree or signed roster behind it. The second name matches that of the camp’s security official, Hassan Abdulkadir Mohamed, who announced in writing on 8 October that the Darawish had taken Qansaxdheere, 90 kilometres from Baidoa. The notice does not say whether the two are the same man.
Abdullahi Ali Watiin, the sixth, was chairman of Baidoa district and mayor of the city when Laftagareen left it. He followed Laftagareen out, and on 7 April he returned to Baidoa after talks and was received by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud at the South West presidential office. On 25 April the state interior minister named a new mayor, days after Watiin was disarmed on suspicion that he was working secretly with Laftagareen’s forces, a suspicion one report carried and none confirmed. The NAMLC notice of 13 October lists him as a financier of al-Shabaab.
The defence ministry has described the Darawish attacks on Baidoa as al-Shabaab operations, and the South West administration put the attackers’ dead at more than seventy after the third assault on 28 September. In September the ministry pointed to an armoured vehicle recaptured from a Darawish convoy, which it said al-Shabaab had seized from the army in 2023. Laftagareen’s side has denied any tie to the group throughout. The NAMLC notice adds nothing to that record: it names no account, no transfer and no intermediary between his camp and al-Shabaab’s finance office, the office whose head the committee listed by name and post in December.
Taliye Shub and the Doolow House
Mahad Abdirahman Adan commanded the Somali Custodial Corps until March, when he was dismissed and then held under house arrest as federal forces moved on Baidoa. He left for Kenya, and on 18 July he was reported at the front north of Baidoa with officers and combat vehicles, beside the forces of his son-in-law, Laftagareen. On the night of 3 September a blast tore through his house in Doolow, in Gedo, and he survived with shrapnel in his face. The federal government said explosives inside the house had caused it, promised a fact-finding committee and has published nothing from that committee since.
On 18 September the general gave his own account on camera. He said a Turkish F-16 fired two missiles into the room where he slept, that his former driver had guided it and was in custody, and he named three officials he held responsible: Speaker Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, the NISA director Mahad Mohamed Salad and President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe. He offered no evidence for the names, and Ankara has neither confirmed nor denied a strike.
The director general of NISA sits on the NAMLC by statute, and the committee’s notice came twenty-five days after the general named the agency’s director on camera. The notice gives no date from which the alleged financing began, and it does not say whether the conduct it relies on came before or after the night in Doolow. Nor does it explain why the NAMLC, which entered a year of birth and a post for every al-Shabaab figure it listed in December, entered neither for a general whose rank and command were matters of public record until March.
Ibrahim Adan Ali “Najah”, Abdifatah Mahad Abdirahman, Abdimajid Mowlid Hassan, Amiin Mad Daruur and Abshir Aden Isak have no published role in any report of the decision, and no account has said what any of the five does for Laftagareen’s camp. One report placed some of the ten on the outskirts of Baidoa and others in Nairobi, where Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said on 27 September that Laftagareen was resting. A freeze ordered by the NAMLC binds banks, money transfer companies and other institutions inside Somalia.
Revenge, a Forum and the Mandate
Ugaas Hassan answered for the camp within hours. He called the decision revenge and said that when the country’s financial system is used for revenge, the result would be felt at the Afisyooni tent, where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected in 2022. He listed the same use of state power in aviation law, the army, the lifting of the arms embargo, the e-visa and the relationship with Turkiye. Abdullahi Aden Kulane, a member of the House of the People, said it was regrettable that the institutions of the state were being exploited by anyone pursuing a political fight.
The listing came eleven days after the former Speaker of the House of the People, Mohamed Mursal Sheikh Abdirahman, arrived in Baidoa on 2 October at the head of a delegation and met President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe to prepare a reconciliation forum in the city for elders, religious leaders and politicians. Laftagareen’s camp had already said on 23 September that it had agreed no ceasefire with anyone, and no date for the forum has been announced.
The former United States ambassador to Somalia, Larry Andre, said in a television interview the same Tuesday that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government was illegitimate and “using its forces primarily as a political militia and producing refugees exactly from the same area”. The opposition holds that the president’s term ended on 15 May. Parliament’s amendments, by the government’s reading, keep him in office until May 2027, and the Supreme Court accepted a challenge to the new constitution on 12 October.
Bay Regional Hospital took in sixty-nine wounded and recorded three deaths after the 28 September assault, the Darawish took Qansaxdheere on 8 October, and no federal operation to retake the town had been announced by Monday 12 October. The list the NAMLC published on Tuesday carries two more names than its list of al-Shabaab’s leaders, and fewer facts about any of them.
