MOGADISHU, Oct. 12 — Officials of Mogadishu's Islamic courts arrested 10 bodyguards after they stopped a former Somali president they once protected from flying overseas in a row over pay, aides and city residents said on Sunday.
Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, head of a defunct Transitional National Government (TNG), had to turn back from a Mogadishu airstrip on Thursday when some of his former bodyguards prevented him from boarding a flight to Djibouti, Libya and Malaysia.
The gunmen, led by Abdiqassim's nephew, Gurey Hoorri, prevented Abdiqassim from flying out of the capital's Balidogle airstrip and demanded they be compensated for what they said was two years of unpaid or underpaid service.
But on Friday Islamic court officials detained the 10, residents and aides to Abdiqassim said. There was no immediate word on the charges to be brought against the men.
Abdiqassim flew out successfully on Sunday through Balidogle for Djibouti and would go on to make the trip he originally planned, aides said.
Abdiqassim aims to represent Somalia at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur, even though the TNG's three-year mandate ran out in August and factions at peace talks have failed to agree a successor administration.
Somalia has been torn by war since the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Since then conflict and famine have killed hundred of thousands of people. The city's main airport has been closed since 1995.
The Arab-backed TNG, formed at a conference of elders meeting in Djibouti in 2000, has never controlled more than a handful of Mogadishu streets and patches of land in the south.
Apart from two breakaway enclaves in the north, the rest of the country is a patchwork of clan fiefdoms. But Abdiqassim says he is still Somalia's president and the TNG will continue to be the government until a successor is decided, statements treated with scepticism by many Somalis in view of the country's chaos.