A Facebook post with a video claiming to show Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud displaying ‘military power’ in Hanan Buure District has been found to be PARTLY FALSE. The video was recorded in Djibouti, not Somalia. The claim emerged after President Mohamud attended the graduation ceremony for over 3,000 Somali National Army troops who completed military training at the Hanan Buure military camp in the central Galgadud region on 16 August 2026.
The video shows a military parade, accompanied by a voiceover referring to military training at the Hanan Buure military camp. However, a Google reverse image search using a keyframe from the clip led PesaCheck to the original video, which shows Djibouti commemorating its 49th independence anniversary. The text accompanying the original video shared on 28 June 2026 reads, “Djibouti's military paraded today to commemorate the 49th anniversary of Djibouti's independence from France.”
Several indicators in the video suggest it depicts Djibouti's independence anniversary. The logo displayed on the vehicles resembles that of the Djiboutian Republican Guard (Garde Républicaine Djiboutienne), and the Djiboutian flag is visible in the video. PesaCheck also found videos and images of Djibouti's Independence Day celebrations showing scenes similar to the video under investigation but recorded from different angles.
Hanan Buure is a district in Somalia’s Galgadud region. Ahmed Abdi Kariye Qoorqoor, the current president of the Galmudug regional state, where Hanan Buure is located, and a member of the Somali President’s Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP), officially announced that he will not seek another term in regional office. This development comes amid a constitutional crisis in Somalia.
Somalia is in a constitutional crisis because opposition leaders state that President Mohamud’s four-year term officially expired on 15 May 2026, while the government insists his mandate runs until 2027 after parliament approved a revised constitution. Fighting between government forces and opposition-allied militias occurred in Mogadishu over election disputes and anti-government protests in June 2026.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative, co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent's largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. The fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Hassan Istiila and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editors Mary Mutisya and Cédrick Irakoze.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah. PesaCheck seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services.
Key points
- The video was recorded in Djibouti, not Somalia.
- The video shows Djibouti commemorating its 49th independence anniversary.
- Somalia is in a constitutional crisis due to disputes over President Mohamud's term.
