SOMALIA-U.N.: Cruel Punishments Show Failure of Judicial Reform

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 1994 (IPS) - The promise that the United Nations could reform Somalia’s judicial system failed to save 25-year-old Abdullahi Weheliye Omar.

Judged guilty of rape by Muslim religious leaders in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, Omar was executed Dec. 8 by a group of men who hurled concrete blocks at him for 20 minutes until he died. A crowd of Somalis, including children, cheered his demise.

Just before he died, Omar sought to convince the court that he was unmarried, when he realised that another man who pleaded guilty to raping the same woman received 100 lashes. The Islamic court only provides the death penalty for married rapists.

Omar’s unusual trial and cruel punishment are just one glimpse of what may be the mood of Somalia’s ‘rebuilt’ judicial system after the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) departs next March.

Amnesty International notes in a new report that the Mogadishu court has sentenced another 12 men and women to amputation, while 160 other accused criminals face flogging.

Somalis defending these punishments argue that they conform with the traditional Muslim legal code, or Sharia. But Amnesty charges that the punishments run counter to the type of legal system UNOSOM tried to set up and also violate international laws to which Somalia is a party.

Andrew Clapham, a New York-based Amnesty researcher, said that amputations are considered a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Somalia signed before the nation veered into anarchy in 1991.

However, the nation has experienced very little of the rule of law since dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown in January 1991. Hostile Somali political factions and clans have since vied for power, with no central authority amid grisly warfare and a ruinous 1991-92 famine.

UNOSOM, which took over from a U.S.-based force in Mar. 1993, sought both to rebuild the country’s social, political and judicial structures and to combat starvation by protecting humanitarian aid.

Although famine seems to have been defeated, the United Nations is aware that, when the 15,000-odd U.N. troops depart next March, the judicial and political scene will be as cluttered as ever.