Mohamed Abdi Hassan
Mohamed Abdi Hassan (Somali: Maxamed Cabdi Xasan, Arabic: محمد عبدي حسن), commonly known as Afweyne, is a Somali entrepreneur and pirate leader. In October 2013, he was put on trial in Brugge on charges of having allegedly masterminded the 2009 hijacking of the Belgian dredge vessel Pompei.
Personal life
Nicknamed "Afweyne" ("Big Mouth" in Somali), Hassan is from Harardhere, a port town in the south-central Galmudug region of Somalia.
He hails from the Habar Gidir sub-clan of the Hawiye.
Hassan has a son, Abdiqaadir, who works closely with him in his business operations.
Career
General
Hassan began his career in piracy in 2005. According to Belgian authorities, he made millions in illegal activities over the next eight years.
The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea linked Hassan with over seven vessel hijackings in 2009. Secondary reports alleged that he was also involved in the capture of dozens of other ships, among which were the MV Sirius Star supertanker and the Ukrainian tank-laden MV Faina in 2008. At his height, Hassan enjoyed a cult following. The late Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who hailed him as a national hero, also invited Hassan to a 2009 four-day celebration in Libya.
Abdi
Abdilahi is a male name. It is a given name with many origins in many countries. Among others, one version has Arabic as origin, while another is of Biblical origin.
Arabic origin Abdi
While Arabic speakers commonly use Abdu (عبده / عبدو ʿabdu) rather than Abdi, both are nicknames for Abdul. It originates from the Arabic word عبد ال ʿabd al- / ʿabd el- / ʿabd ul-. The name translates as "servant" or "slave" in reference to religious submission to Allah (God). As such, it is often used by Muslims around the world in conjunction with one of the names of God in Islam, but also sometimes on its own.
Biblical Abdi
Abdi is also the name of three men in the Hebrew Bible
Fikret Abdić
Fikret Abdić (born 29 September 1939) is a Bosnian politician and businessman who first rose to prominence in the 1980s for his role in turning the Velika Kladuša-based agriculture company Agrokomerc into one of the biggest conglomerates in SFR Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, during the Bosnian War, Abdić declared his opposition to the official Bosnian government, and established the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, a small and short-lived province in the northwestern corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of the town of Velika Kladuša and nearby villages.
The mini-state existed between 1993 and 1995 and was allied with the Army of Republika Srpska. In 2002 he was convicted on charges of war crimes against Bosniaks loyal to the Bosnian government by a court in Croatia and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, which was later reduced on appeal to 15 years by the Supreme Court of Croatia. On 9 March 2012, he was released after having served two thirds of his reduced sentence.
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