Somalia: Further information on prisoners of conscience/incommunicado detention/fear of ill-treatment

Index Number: AFR 52/004/2007
Date Published: 8 March 2007
Categories: Africa, Somalia

Yusuf Abdi Gabobe, the Haatuf (Messenger) publisher, was sentenced on 4 March to two years' imprisonment for obstruction of a police officer. The newspaper's editor, Ali Abdi Dini, and journalist Mohamed Omar Sheikh Ibrahim, were each sentenced to 29 months' imprisonment for "reporting false information about the government, discrediting the president and his family and creating inter-communal tension." Amnesty International considers them prisoners of conscience, detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression.