Mukhtar Robow

On 7 Nov 2018 The United Nations Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) warned of presidential election in Somalia's South West State have the potential to lead to violence and called on all parties to ensure that the electoral process proceeds in accordance with the established rules and avoids any behaviour which may lead to conflict or undermine the integrity of the electoral process.

On 13 December 2018, Mukhtar Robow was arrested by African Union peacekeepers from Ethiopia and flown to Mogadishu under tight security. At least 12 people were killed in Baidoa in violence that erupted following Robow's arrest. Among those killed was a member of the regional parliament. The victims were shot by AMISOM Ethiopian forces and Somali Special Forces flown from Mogadishu.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Nicholas Haysom wrote to the Somali government on December 30, 2018, requesting details of the legal basis of the arrest of Robow, as well as calling for investigations into the deaths in the protests following his detention. Somalia's security forces used lethal force to put down three days of demonstrations in the south-western town of Baidoa on 13–15 December, with at least 15 people killed and 300 people arrested, according to the UN. On January 1, 2019, three people were wounded including two UN staff members when a barrage of mortars were fired into the main UN base in Mogadishu.

On 23 June 2017, United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed him Reward for Justice (RFJ) list following discussions was made with the Somali government after a US$5 million bounty was placed on him for information leading to his location on June 7, 2012.

On 13 August 2017, he surrendered to the Somali Government authorities. In a press conference held in Mogadishu shortly after, he denounced Al-Shabaab and called on its members to quit the group.

Robow and other leading Al-Shabaab members challenged the leadership of Ahmed Abdi Godane (Moktar Ali Zubeyr) at Barawe in June 2013. Godane killed two of the leading members, and Robow fled to his home district. Godane's forces launched an offensive against Robow's supporters, it was reported in August 2013.

Robow later served as the Deputy Commander of the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled much of the south of Somalia. A hardline and radical Islamist who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the early 2000s, Robow was blacklisted by the United States as a terrorist leader.

Sheikh Mukhtar Robow (Somali: Mukhtaar Rooboow, Arabic: مختار روبوو ‎ born 10 October 1969), also known as Abu Mansur, is a former deputy leader and former spokesman of the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab.

Robow was born on 10 October 1969 in Hudur, in the Bakool region southern Somalia. He studied at a local Qur'anic school, and later continued his religious education in the mosques of Mogadishu as well as those of his home region. A member of the Rahaweyn and more specifically of the Leysan clan which is particularly well represented in the South West State of Somalia. Robow also studied Islamic law in the 1990s at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.