{{A Somalia court will give its ruling on Sunday on an appeal by a journalist against his jailing for one year for interviewing an alleged rape victim.}}<\/p>\n
Hassan Mohamed Ali, the judge at the court of appeals in Mogadishu, said on Wednesday he needed more time to consider the case and pronounce his verdict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis case has a lot of weight and we will announce the verdict on Sunday 3 of March,” he said. <\/p>\n
Journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim and the 27-year-old woman were sentenced to one year in prison on charges including insulting a government body, making false accusations and seeking to profit from said allegations.<\/p>\n
As Ibrahim was led away from the courtroom, he could be heard screaming to his defence team \u201cThere is no justice here, let me serve the one-year jail term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somalia\u2019s National Journalists’ Union said they were not happy with Wednesday’s postponement. \u201cOur friend is going back to jail. <\/p>\n
This delay is not good. Verdict should have been announced today\u201d, Mohamed Ibrahim, secretary general of the union said.<\/p>\n
But Mohamed Mohamud Afrah, Ibrahim’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera that he was hopeful Ibrahim will be freed on Sunday. \u201cAll our evidence that we put forward was seen today. <\/p>\n
Most of the witnesses were also brought before the court, which did not happen before. So we hopeful of good outcome on Sunday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned about his [Ibrahim] mental state as he was crying as he was led away today for the first time.\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Rights activists, including US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW), have alleged that the ruling was politically motivated, and urged the appeals court to acquit the two defendants.<\/p>\n
Three other defendants were acquitted during the February 5 trial by a Benadir regional court.<\/p>\n
At the trial, the judges did not permit the defence to present witnesses or evidence to rebut the prosecution’s case. <\/p>\n
Prior to being charged, the woman was interrogated for two days by the police without a lawyer present, HRW said.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim, who has been under detention since January 10, began serving his sentence at Mogadishu Central Prison immediately after the trial. <\/p>\n
The woman is to begin her sentence after nursing her baby.<\/p>\n
Aljazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A Somalia court will give its ruling on Sunday on an appeal by a journalist against his jailing for one year for interviewing an alleged rape victim.}} Hassan Mohamed Ali, the judge at the court of appeals in Mogadishu, said on Wednesday he needed more time to consider the case and pronounce his verdict. \u201cThis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}