Friday June 2, 2023
By GORDON OSEN
A Somali man who killed a friend and then negotiated with the family for forgiveness through Maslaha, a Muslim faith concept, and paid 100 camels has got a slight reprieve in his murder appeal.
Abdullah Noor Mohamed was convicted and sentenced to death in 2016 for stabbing and killing Abdulahi Nor Mohammed in Eastleigh in 2013.
His insistence on using Islamic faith and Somali culture as shield during trial was relentless. Even before the court gave a verdict, a lawyer appointed by his family approached the court asking “for plea bargaining as the two families were negotiating an out-of-court settlement pursuant to the Somali culture, law and religion”.
The prosecution opposed it and the court dismissed it.
But on appeal, he was slightly lucky as his death sentence was substituted for 20 years in jail, starting from the date of his incarceration.
Details of the case obtained from the court papers show that on the evening of June 24, 2013, Ahmed Bishar Ali, Abdulahi Nor Mohammed and Yuni Farah Mohamed were walking on the streets of Eastleigh and they heard someone crying loudly in Somali dialect, asking for help.
The three gathered courage and walked to where the call for help was coming from.
In the well-lit corner, Abdullah Noor Mohamed, a man they knew, had cornered another Somali youth snatching a phone from him, under the threat of stabbing with a sharp knife. It was at 6.30pm.
The young man being accosted, was calling the name of one of the three- Abdulahi Nor Mohammed- for help.
When they reached the place, the attacker- Abdullah Noor Mohamed- turned the knife on the three, stabbing Abdulahi Nor Mohammed on the left side of his chest before running away.
Abdulahi Nor Mohammed was rushed to a local hospital for attention and later to Aga Khan hospital where he died. He died upon arrival at the hospital.
Close to two months later, Abdullah Noor Mohamed, the man accused of committing the crime was arrested on August 13, 2013, by members of the public in Eastleigh when he got involved in another case of mugging and public robbery.
In fact, it emerged that the man had already been charged with robbery with violence in another case at a magistrate’s court but the matter was settled out of court and file marked closed.
A postmortem report in his trial showed that the deceased had a penetrating stab wound on the left anterior chest wall on the left pericardium just underlying the heart, 5cm long just inside the left nipple on the level of 4th and 5th ribs on the left.
The cause of death was extrangulation or haemorrhage due to stab wound by a sharp object.
In his defence, he denied the murder charge, claiming that on that day, he was playing football till 6.30pm and when he was walking home, he saw some young men, including Abdulahi Nor Mohammed, fighting.
He went to help him as he was his friend, he said.
“He pulled him from the fight and noticed that he was bleeding on his left chest. The deceased told him that he had been stabbed by one man he had been fighting with but that he was not badly injured, thus, he would not go to hospital,” court papers read.
Reports reached him at 9pm that day that Abdulahi Nor Mohammed had died and on August 13, he was be arrested.
In giving the appeal decision that gave the accused slight relief on May 26, the three-judge bench said the man was still young and had life ahead of him.
“On our part, we note that the appellant is a young man with his whole life ahead of him and we find he should benefit from this jurisprudential paradigm and have the death sentence set aside.”’
“….we set aside the death sentence meted out by the trial court and substitute it with one of years imprisonment to run from the date when the appellant was arraigned in the High Court.”