Fascist colonial courts convicted Somalis merely for challenging white testimony without evidence

Evidence

Osman had the misfortune to intimately witness Cossu’s brutality to Somalis. In one incident, Cossu sent Warsame Cumar Siyaad, a clerk at the office of an Italian businessman, to prison for five days. Warsame’s employer accused him of molesting and harassing a friend’s wife. The commissioner believed the businessman without making any inquiry. Warsame disputed the claim, but the accuser was not asked to produce evidence. Instead, the commissioner sentenced Warsame to prison for five days for daring to call the white man a liar. Osman, who was the interpreter for Cusso, heard him announce that the five days would teach Warsame how to behave as a “native.” Osman begged the commissioner to pardon Warsame but to no avail. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader Somali history project — colonial injustice as a driver of the independence politics of the 1960s.