Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, also known as Abu Mansur, born in the 1960s in Huddur, southwestern Somalia, is a Somali government minister and former deputy leader and spokesman of Al Shabaab.
A member of the Rahanweyn clan, he studied law at the University of Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s and worked for the Al-Haramain Foundation.
He defected from Al Shabaab to the Somali government in 2017.
In 2018, he ran for the South West State regional presidency but was arrested by Somali forces, sparking protests and a political crisis.
After three years under house arrest, Robow was appointed Somalia’s minister of religious affairs in 2022 under president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.