Osman and Hussen never punished their political opponents while in power

Evidence

Osman enjoyed his new freedom by often taking walks in various areas of the city and traveling freely outside Mogadishu. As Yusuf Dhuhul noted in his remarks nearly two decades later, such freedom was possible because the Osman-Hussen team lived by the country’s democratic constitution, and at no time while in power did they use state power to punish their political opponents. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 985

Categorization

• XREF: Connects forward to the military coup and Siyaad Barre’s later repression — the contrast is the point of the chapter.
• SHARE: A crucial piece of evidence for Somalia’s brief democratic era, useful for anyone writing on African post-independence democracy as contrasted with later dictatorships.