Somalia opposition accuses president of arresting chief justice

Mogadishu — Somalia's political crisis deepened on Thursday after the opposition accused President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of sending troops to arrest the Supreme Court's chief justice. The allegation came hours after the tribunal declared an extension of the president's term "unlawful", the Japan Times reported.

The claim, made by the opposition, could not be independently confirmed in the report, and the president's office has not been quoted responding to it. But even as an accusation, it lands in a capital already strained: political rivalries in Somalia have repeatedly descended into violent clashes, and trust between the presidency and its opponents is thin.

The standoff turns on the length of Mohamud's mandate. The Supreme Court's ruling against the term extension was, according to the account carried by the Japan Times, what preceded the alleged move against the chief justice. Who controls the court — and whether it can enforce its own order — is now the question at the heart of the crisis.

The timing is poor for a government fighting on another front. International support for Mogadishu's campaign against Al-Shabaab, the powerful Islamist insurgent group, has been slipping, even as the militants remain a potent threat across much of the country. A prolonged feud between the presidency, the opposition and the judiciary risks draining what political capital the government has left.

Mohamud has staked his reputation on reform. He has pushed to move Somalia towards fully democratic elections, replacing the clan-based system in which elders choose the country's representatives. Critics of term extensions across the region have long argued they hollow out precisely that promise; the court's "unlawful" ruling now puts that argument at the centre of Somali politics.

For Somalis, the immediate questions are concrete. They are waiting to learn the fate of the chief justice and whether the arrest allegation is borne out, to hear the president answer his accusers, and to see whether the court's ruling on the term extension will be honoured — or whether the country slides further into the clashes its rivalries have produced before.