This from a May 7, 1970 London Times channeling of a Reuters report:
Mogadishu, Somalia, May 6 — Almost 50,000 people watched as a Somali soldier was executed by a firing squad today — the first public execution in the republic — for the murder of a girl.
In a statement read out at the execution, Lieutenant Ali Abdul-Rahman, the Attorney General, said: “The aim of imposing capital punishment on any citizen is to teach real justice, without which there can be no discipline here.”
Private Ibrahim Husain Muhammad was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in July, 1968. His appeals to the military High Court and to the Somali Supreme Court were rejected.
Somali dictator Siad Barre had good cause to worry about “discipline here.”
Whether the regime of the onetime Italian carabineire “taught justice” is another matter altogether.
On this day..
- 1506: James Tyrrell, Princes in the Tower murderer?
- 1780: Dennis Carragan, John Hill, and Marmaduke Grant, robbers
- 1916: Not Constance Markievicz, "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me"
- 1801: Franz Troglauer
- 1791: William Jones, "in a country out of the reach of my enemies"
- 1955: Johnson William Caldwell
- 1887: Theodore Baker, who knew how it feels to be hanged
- 1958: Vivian Teed, a first and a last
- 1972: Deniz Gezmis, Yusuf Aslan, and Huseyin Inan, Turkish revolutionaries
- 1904: Zenon Champoux, French degenerate
- 1777: Antoine-Francois Derues, scam artist
- 1916: Syrian and Lebanese nationalists, who christen "Martyr's Day"