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By Rakiya A. Omaar
On 7 August, Somaliland’s nine political prisoners were released after two months in Hargeisa central prison when the government failed to bring a case against them. The men, most of them former fighters with the Somali National Movement (SNM), were arrested between 20-25 May, charged with involvement in subversive activities. The precise charge, “qaran dumus”, implies an intention to bring about the collapse of Somaliland through armed insurrection. They were arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential elections, and more specifically, after an incident on 18 May when security forces clashed with a group of former SNM guerrillas in the Red Sea district of Hargeisa. Surprisingly, however, according to the written judgement of the court, “they are members of the armed group which gathered together on the night of 20 April and which tried to cause disruption and political instability and which exchanged gunfire with the police.” It is, of course, possible that the court simply got its dates wrong, otherwise it is difficult to understand why the government waited a month before taking action.
In a recent press conference, the men—Ahmed Yusuf Hassan, Nur Guure Elmi, Nuh Ahmed Jama, Osman Abdi Ismail, Ali Omer Mohamed, Mohamed Dahir Warsame, Kayse Ahmed Osman, Ahmed Mohamed Hashi and Ahmed Barkhadle Aideed— spoke at length about their ordeal, saying that they wanted “to let the people of Somaliland know how we came to be arrested and treated.” In a subsequent interview with African Rights, they spoke movingly about prison conditions, the plight of the many common prisoners they met, and expressed their determination to struggle for the rights of their fellow-prisoners.
Suspected of being members of the opposition political party, Kulmiye, their interrogation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) focused on proving a political and military link with former commanders of the SNM who then occupied senior positions within Kulmiye. In particular, the CID wanted to know if Kulmiye had transferred weapons to them, and if they acted as co-ordinators between these SNM commanders and the youth membership of Kulmiye. Nuh Ahmed Jama, himself a policeman at the Presidency for a decade until five days before his arrest, was never questioned.
Intense domestic political pressure and international criticism led to the release of the men after two months of incarceration. “We were”, one of them commented, “the luckiest people in that prison.” Without their political visibility, they would have undoubtedly languished in prison, as so many people accused of common crimes do.
They were, indeed, fortunate to some extent. But they were also adept in the art of fighting back, and were not afraid to take on the individuals and institutions which branded them as enemies of their nation and then denied them their freedom. They knew that the Constitution set a limit of 48 hours within which a detainee should be taken before the relevant magistrate. But for 87 days, they were never presented to a magistrate. Every seven days, the office of the Attorney-General renewed their detention orders without even sending someone to verify their existence, let alone their identities. “The first time a representative of the Attorney-General’s office actually met us was on the day we were brought to court”, commented Ali Omer Mohamed. In an attempt to force the Attorney-General to act, on 15 June the detainees wrote an application to the Regional Court demanding that they be tried or released. Instead of acting, the Attorney-General launched a counter appeal, and the Regional Court of Appeal granted him another 45 days to hold the men, whose faces were still unknown to him and his staff. “If a group of people had been selected at random and taken to court, the Attorney-General wouldn’t have been any the wiser”, Ali added.
In an effort to get the government off the hook, the Attorney-General telephoned the men in prison in the hope of obtaining a confession from them. He spoke to Osman Abdi Ismail who remembers his words. “You will write a letter saying that we will not commit this same crime again and we undertake to safeguard security.” He also recalled his own response. “You have a responsibility for the nation as a whole. You are the very person who should be upholding the laws of the country and guaranteeing justice. In case you have lost sight of that, we have only two requests to make to you: either prosecute us for the crime with which we are charged, or release us immediately.”
Prosecution was a big political gamble since the government was on thin ground when it came to the crucial question of evidence. So a “trial” of sorts was arranged to give the impression of due process. On the morning of 7 August, the men were brought before the Regional Court of Hargeisa which stated that “given the seriousness of the alleged crime there does not exist sufficient proof to prosecute, or such has not been transmitted to the court.” The judgement added that the case, so far, had not gone beyond the initial suspicious circumstances which had led to the arrest of the men. In a comment reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, the court, which had just declared the men innocent of the alleged crime, then warned them “not to commit the said crime again.” The accused believe that this remark, which was included in the written judgement but was not part of the statement read out in court, was inserted at the wish of the Minister of the Interior, Ismail Adan Osman.
Angry and distressed at what they and their families have had to endure, the men said they would like to sue the government. But where, they asked, do we begin? “The only places where we can lodge a complaint against the mistreatment and abuse we suffered”, one of them said, “are the same institutions which committed the crime against us.”
For these political prisoners in particular, perhaps the most poignant aspect of their experience is the way their past and present have become so painfully enmeshed. All of them were young men in the 1980s with a future to look forward to. They gave up their hopes—and many of their relatives and close friends gave up their lives—to banish the injustice and lawlessness of the Siad Barre regime. They fought a long and bitter war, along with many others, to bring about a political system where politicians and civil servants must exercise their power with restraint and a sense of accountability. But 15 years later, little seems to have changed in that respect. “The men who investigated our case, the ones who arrested us, and the prosecutors, are all the very people who used to investigate us, arrest us, spy on us and prosecute us during the Siad regime”, they lamented, naming their tormentors and detailing their past association with a hated government. Their methods of arrest and interrogation, indeed their very questions, were a throwback to the past. Nur Gurre Elmi was asked “if he wore a shawl”, a query that plagued young men in the mid-1980s when it was rumoured that members of the SNM disguised their appearance by draping shawls.
None of us can undo the damage inflicted on these men and their families. But some good can come out of this situation, and it already has, for these prisoners now see their mission as defenders of the men, women and children who spend years in our prisons for lack of attention. “What happened to us—the injustice—is absolutely routine in prison”, in their words. “It happened around us all the time.” They paid a warm tribute to the prison personnel, saying: “under the circumstances they treated us as best as they could and never forgot that the prisoners are their brothers and sisters.” But they spoke of atrocious prison conditions where minors are locked up with hardened criminals; of people who have simply become a statistic because no-one is fighting for them. They criticised the laws that allow the government to lock up its critics in order to settle political scores and a judiciary that is, at best, weak, corrupt and inefficient, and at worse a weapon of its political masters. “We want”, they concluded, “to pressure the government to respect basic human rights.” A good place to start is to help them fight on behalf of the names, faces and cases that they cannot—and do not want—to forget.
* Rakiya A. Omaar is the director of the international human rights organisation, African Rights.
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