Somalia's Appeals Court Frees Sadiyo Bajaaj, Rebukes a Conviction Built on Nothing

It took the appeals court seven days to unwind what the Banadir Regional Court had spent months building. Sadiyo, a 27-year-old tuk-tuk driver who became one of the most visible online critics of Somalia's government, was arrested twice this year for speaking out — once in March for joining street protests over fuel prices, and again in April for posting a video accusing President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and other officials of corruption. The second arrest held. She spent 74 days in Mogadishu Central Prison before being convicted on June 25 and handed the maximum available sentence on a charge of "public incitement" that named no victim, alleged no specific harm, and rested on nothing more than the video itself. In total, she spent 122 days in custody — from her April 12 arrest to her August 12 release — before an appeals court found the case against her had no legal footing at all. Shabelle TV and Somali Cable TV both broke the news within minutes of each other Wednesday evening, citing her defense team. Her lawyer later confirmed it directly to Somali Cable TV: "Sadiyo waa Xor" — Sadiyo is free. A Case Built on Convenience, Not Evidence The details of Sadiyo's prosecution, documented in real time by the Organization for Prisoners' Rights (OPR), describe a case shaped less by evidence than by institutional convenience. She was arrested twice. The first time, on March 12, she was detained for four days after joining protests against rising fuel costs — a warning shot, released without charge. The second arrest came a month later, on April 12, when officers from Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) picked her up in Mogadishu's Hodan district over the video criticizing the president. She was transferred to Mogadishu Central Prison two days later and held there for 74 days before her trial concluded. During that detention, she was denied adequate access to legal counsel, and her family was never formally notified of the charges against her — a violation Amnesty International flagged publicly at the time. In an audio recording that circulated in April, Sadiyo said she had gone without food for four of seven days in custody. She said she was punished inside the prison for speaking about the conditions she faced. Somalia's Attorney General, Suleyman Mohamed Mahmoud, defended the detention publicly — and in doing so, told the public she had been arrested on April 21, nine days after OPR's documented record shows she was actually taken into custody. He did not address the denial-of-counsel allegation or the failure to notify her family. Earlier in the proceedings, the Banadir Regional Court itself had sent the case back to prosecutors with instructions to strengthen their evidence — a court acting less as an arbiter than as a partner in building the case against her. None of that produced a stronger case. It produced the maximum sentence anyway. "The court handed down the maximum sentence under the charges. We will appeal the ruling," her defense lawyer, Mohamed Sheikh Halane, said the day she was convicted. The Appeal Her legal team filed that appeal immediately, arguing the conviction rested on no demonstrated harm and no identified victim — only a video and a broad, undefined charge of public incitement. The Banadir Regional Court of Appeal began rehearing the case on August 5. A week later, it agreed: the original judgment lacked sufficient legal basis, and Sadiyo was ordered released. A Pattern, Not an Aberration Sadiyo's case did not happen in isolation. It follows a pattern of arbitrary arrests of journalists and activists that has intensified in Somalia since at least 2022, alongside the expanding use of NISA to police political dissent and a March 2025 Information Ministry directive banning vaguely defined "content that threatens national security" — with no independent body responsible for defining either term. Her case also sits uncomfortably close to the unresolved 2021 disappearance of Ikran Tahliil Farah, a young NISA officer whose case was never conclusively investigated despite sustained public pressure. That case established a precedent of its own: that there are few consequences for what happens to women inside Somalia's security and detention system. Sadiyo's 122 days in custody, and the retaliation she says she faced for describing hunger, sit inside that same unaccountable system. What made her case distinct — and why it drew sustained domestic and international attention — was that it produced a completed conviction, at the maximum sentence, on a charge that required no proof of harm to anyone. Bajaaj drivers, the community she spoke for, have no institutional power in Somali politics: no parliamentary bloc, no lobby, no capacity to absorb a prolonged fight with the state. Her prosecution made clear that even their economic grievances become a security matter once someone gives them a public voice. What the Reversal Does, and Doesn't, Resolve The appeals court's ruling is a real check on a conviction that should never have stood, and it matters that it came at all in a system where few such rulings do. But it resolves one case, not the conditions that produced it. Somalia's vague incitement statutes remain on the books. NISA's authority to detain critics before charges are filed remains intact. The March 2025 directive on "national security" content remains undefined. And the Attorney General who misstated the date of her arrest — and never answered the denial-of-counsel and family-notification allegations against his own office — has faced no accountability for either. Sadiyo Bajaaj went home Wednesday, 122 days after she was first taken into custody. The system that held her that long on a charge that named no victim is still standing exactly as it was. Somali authorities have not issued a public statement responding to the appeals court's ruling. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ismail Abukar is Co-founder and Chairperson of the Organization for Prisoners' Rights (OPR), an independent civil society organization based in Mogadishu, Somalia. He has conducted primary field research in Somalia for seven years covering prisoners' rights, enforced disappearances, press freedom, and electoral corruption. His investigations have been published by African Arguments: "The Disappeared" (June 2026) and "The Journalists Who Disappeared" (August 2026). He holds an MA in International Law and Human Rights from the University for Peace (UPEACE) and maintains an active ORCID record: 0009-0003-1435-3691.