Woman Jailed in Somali ‘False Rape’ Case Cleared of All Bullshit Charges

A Somali woman who’d been sentenced to one year in prison for “offending state institutions” by alleging she was raped by security forces has been cleared of all charges by a Somali court. A journalist who interviewed her about the alleged rape (who’d also been convicted of offending those apparently touchy state institutions) had his sentence reduced, but will still languish in jail for six months.

In other words, a gross injustice on the part of the Somali justice system has been ameliorated — now, it’s simply a regular old injustice. A Somali court had earlier ruled that the woman had not been raped based on the testimony of a midwife who performed the ever-reliable “finger test.” Abdiaz Abdinur Ibrahim, the 25-year-old journalist who was detained in January for, according to Somali police, collecting material on rape in camps for displaced people, was convicted for interviewing the woman about the alleged rape. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, has publicly criticized the decision to keep Abdiaz Abdinur in jail for reporting that sexual assault, an actual crime, is distressingly prevalent in Somalia.