Mohammad Ali Samatar (1 January 1931 – 19 August 2016) was Prime Minister of Somalia from 1 February 1987 to 3 September 1990, succeeding Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal and preceding Hawadle Madar.
Biography[]
Mohammad Ali Samatar was born in Kismayo, Italian Somaliland in 1931. He served as a Lieutenant General in the Somali National Army under the Marxist military dictator Siad Barre, fighting in the Ogaden War. He went on to serve as Minister of Defense from 1980 to 1986, and he served as acting head of state after Siad Barre was heavily injured in a car crash in 1986. In 1987, he became Somalia's first Prime Minister since 1969, and, during the Somali Civil War, he oversaw a genocide in Somaliland which killed anywhere from 50,000 to over 200,000 civilians. He fled to the United States after the downfall of Siad Barre's government, and he died in Virginia in 2016.