MOA tried to establish a presence in Somalia in the 1980s. A security group formed by MOA applied for a contract with the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu in 1987.
A seized document shows the name of Dahir Aweys appeared on a MOA contact list with an address in Mogadishu. He led the Islamist terrorist group Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya that had ties to Usama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s.
He later became a senior figure in the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Courts Union in Somalia in 2006. He and his fighters then joined the Hizbul Islam terrorist group, followed by Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda’s official Somali wing. He was captured by the Somali government in 2013.
A MOA contact list also included an Islamic institute in Somalia.
