Sept 6 (Reuters) - Hardline Somali Muslim cleric, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, in hiding since a war at the end of 2006 that ousted his Islamic courts movement from south Somalia, showed up on Thursday at a conference in Eritrea.

Here are some key facts about Aweys:

* Aweys is among 189 individuals or entities the United States "linked to terrorism" shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United Nations has him on a list of individuals "belonging to or associated with" al Qaeda. Washington has ruled out any contact with Aweys, who denies any al Qaeda links.

* Aweys, said to have been born in 1935, is on record as saying he would like Islamic rule based on sharia law in Somalia, and is considered a hardliner. He used to head the Ifka Halanka Islamic court in north Mogadishu, one of 14 that joined forces to oust the city's warlords in mid-2006. The courts' leaders fled Mogadishu as Ethiopian and Somali government troops advanced at the end of December, 2006.

* A colonel in the army of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, Aweys was decorated for bravery in a war against rival Ethiopia in 1977. Military experts credit Aweys' training and strategy for giving his fighters the edge in warfare against the militias of warlords the Islamists routed last year.

* In the 1990s, he led al-Ittihad al-Islami, which at the time was Somalia's largest militant Islamist group. He was soundly defeated in battles against Ethiopia and Somalia warlords backed by Addis Ababa, among them Somalia's interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf.

* A U.N. report in May, 2006, on violations of a 1992 Security Council arms embargo said Aweys had run training camps since early 2005, and that Eritrea had sent him weapons in a bid to frustrate rival Ethiopia, which was accused of giving weapons to the warlords. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia deny the charges.

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