Somalia: Somaliland - Activist Who Decried Executions Detained - Free, Drop Charges Against Prominent Rights Lawyer

press release

Nairobi — Somaliland authorities on April 18, 2015, detained a prominent human rights activist, apparently for criticizing the government's execution of six prisoners, Human Rights Watch said today. Police arrested Guleid Ahmed Jama after he made statements on the radio denouncing the executions, the first in Somaliland in nearly a decade. The authorities should immediately release him and drop the charges against him.

Guleid, 29, is a lawyer and the chairman of the Human Rights Centre, one of Somaliland's few independent human rights monitoring organizations. He has been charged with "anti-national" propaganda and other crimes, and faces up to six years in prison or longer. Police initially held him in isolation and denied him contact with his family.

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