MOGADISHU — Somalia’s Supreme Court has ruled that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term in office expired in May, declared the one-year extension of his mandate unlawful, and ordered that new elections be held within 90 days — a judgment that has plunged the Horn of Africa nation into its deepest constitutional crisis in years.
The court’s five-judge Constitutional Division handed down the ruling on Thursday, November 5. It found that constitutional amendments passed by parliament in March, which stretched the presidential and parliamentary terms from four years to five, could not be applied to the current office-holders — because parliament itself had already run out of time.
Parliament’s mandate, the judges said, ended on April 14, 2026. President Mohamud’s ended on May 15. Every action the two institutions have taken since those dates, the court ruled, is unconstitutional, unlawful, and null and void. The president and his administration, it added, are now exercising only caretaker functions — enough to keep the state running and avoid a constitutional vacuum, but not enough to take major policy decisions.
The court gave Somalia’s political leaders 30 days to agree on a new electoral framework, and ordered elections within 90 days.
A chief justice dismissed the day before
The ruling landed a day after Mohamud dismissed the court’s chief justice, Bashe Yusuf Ahmed, and replaced him with his predecessor, Ibrahim Idle Suleiman — a former legal adviser to the president and a member of the ruling party. The presidency said the move followed complaints from judges and judicial staff, and was needed for a more efficient and fair judiciary.
The court rejected that outright. “The statement regarding the removal of the Chief Justice published on the Presidency’s Facebook page lacks any legal basis,” it said in its judgment, holding that the president has no constitutional authority to remove the head of the judiciary on his own. Under the constitution, removing a chief justice requires the Judicial Service Commission to propose it and both houses of parliament, sitting jointly, to approve it by a simple majority.
The judges also connected the dismissal to a petition filed by former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on October 11, challenging the constitutional amendments and the mandates of the federal institutions. The dismissal, the court said, appeared designed to interfere with a case already before it.
Troops at the court, judges in hiding
Within hours of the verdict, the confrontation turned physical. Somali security forces, deploying more than 30 military pickup vehicles, stormed the Supreme Court’s premises and forced the chief justice out of the court complex, according to Somali media reports.
Former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire accused the president of deploying troops to the court to arrest the chief justice and the lawyers involved, and of halting court operations. The AFP news agency said it could not independently verify the arrest allegations, although Somali media published images purportedly showing military personnel inside the court compound.
The latest reports say the dismissed chief justice and the five judges who delivered Thursday’s verdict — presiding judge Salah Sheikh Ibrahim Dhiblawe, Abukar Ahmed Ali, Abdulkadir Idiris Eise, AbdulAsis Mohamed Yusuf and Abdulqafar Hussein Isaq — have fled to the Mogadishu residence of former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, now an opposition leader, amid fears of government reprisals. The opposition, which has aligned itself with the court’s position, welcomed the judgment and condemned both the dismissal and the deployment of troops as unlawful.
How Somalia got here
Mohamud, who returned to the presidency in 2022 for a second stint in office, has argued that the March amendments give him a legal basis to stay on while he prepares nationwide elections scheduled for April and May 2027 — part of a plan to move Somalia from its clan-based indirect voting system to direct elections. Opposition parties largely boycotted the March vote, calling the reforms an attempt to entrench presidential power.
The court took the opposite view: parliament ratified the amendments after its own mandate had expired, at which point it no longer had the legal authority to make such far-reaching changes. The legislature had, in effect, become a caretaker body, the judges held.
Why this matters
Somalia is not a country that can afford a leaderless stretch. The al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabaab still controls parts of the country, and the government is fighting it with international backing that is already thinning: Uganda, the largest contributor to the African Union mission in Somalia, has announced plans to withdraw its troops by the end of 2027, and Washington has cut funding for a critical United Nations logistics mission supporting the military coalition.
A president whose legal right to govern has just been voided by his own Supreme Court, a court whose judges have fled into hiding, and a 90-day election deadline in a country that has never held a direct nationwide vote — that combination is how constitutional crises become security crises. The next test comes quickly: whether Mohamud accepts the ruling, whether the 30-day negotiation window produces an electoral framework the opposition will join, and whether the security forces answer to the court, the president, or no one at all.
For now, the court’s message is unambiguous: the president’s time ran out in May, and the clock on new elections is already running.
