While the federal government deports immigrants by the thousands, at least two children of Somali dictator Siad Barre, whose regime killed an estimated 200,000 people, have been living quietly in Ohio for more than three decades. One of them, a historian says, served as his father’s “right-hand man.” Another ran a home health company that collected more than $1.8 million in Medicare payments.
The New York Post located Ayanle Mohamed Siad, 61, and his sister Deka Mohamed Siad, 69, in the Columbus area. Victims of the regime who also settled in the United States are now asking American authorities to take a closer look, and the question of who gets to stay in this country, and why, is impossible to ignore.
Ali-Guban Mohamed, whose relatives were killed during Barre’s rule, told the Post he was stunned when he encountered Ayanle at a local mosque.
“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes so I was shocked to see his son [Ayanle] in the mosque enjoying his freedom.”
Mohamed said members of his family were rounded up in the town of Agabur, executed, and dumped into a well. No one was ever held accountable.
Barre seized power in a 1969 coup and ruled for more than two decades. The Center for Justice and Accountability documents a campaign of widespread atrocities against civilians, particularly in the northwest. During the 1988 assault on Hargeisa, the country’s second-largest city, government bombing destroyed an estimated 70 percent of the city and killed more than 5,000 civilians. Nearly half a million people fled into Ethiopia.
Ayanle was not simply another member of the dictator’s family, according to Oxford researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis.
“When his father had an accident [and was temporarily unable to rule], Ayanle became de facto ruler in the Villa Somalia, running day-to-day regime activities solely with an iron-fist.”
Ingiriis said Ayanle had enough authority to appoint and dismiss government officials on his father’s behalf.
Ayanle arrived in the United States after Barre was toppled. He has since operated a translation company, been linked to a Columbus coffee shop, and launched a nonprofit in 2004. He has never publicly denounced his father’s regime.
His sister Deka and her late husband, former Somali ambassador Abdikarim Ali Omar, operated Vanguard Home Health Care in Ohio. The company received more than $1.8 million in Medicare funding before closing after Omar’s death in 2021. The Post reported that the business appeared legitimate and filed proper paperwork. To be clear: there is no allegation that the Medicare payments were fraudulent. But paperwork is not the same as accountability.
The Daily Caller separately highlighted the Medicare connection and noted the stark proximity: Columbus is home to roughly 70,000 Somalis, one of the largest such communities in the country. Many are refugees from the very regime Barre’s children represent.
For those refugees, the problem goes well beyond geography.
Human rights activist Suleiman Bolaleh has spent years documenting the regime’s crimes. He wants federal scrutiny applied here.
“I am calling for an investigation to be opened against his family to find out exactly what they were doing during the civil war, what they know and to give up any proceeds they may have inherited from this criminal genocidal dictator.”
That demand has precedent. Former Somali defense minister Mohamed Ali Samantar was found liable in federal court in 2012 for human rights abuses and ordered to pay $21 million to victims. It has happened before. It could happen again.
Barre himself escaped Somalia in 1991 and died in Nigeria four years later.
His victims escaped too.
Some of them wound up in Ohio, only to discover that members of the dictator’s own family had gotten there as well
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