By: Yusuf M Hasan
BURAO (Somalilandsun) – Police are holding the Burao wife butcher pending his arraignment in court soon.
The arrest of the wife butcher Muhumed Ahmed came a couple of days following his escape after perpetrating the grisly murder of wife of two months in Sheikh Bashir estate Burao town.
The irate husband who is said to have caused the death of his youthful wife through several punctures to her body through a sharp butcher’s knife is believed to have given himself up after failing to get a safe haven from relatives due to the confinement by police of his aged father.
Now that the butcher is in custody and in view of the gruesome manner in which he ended the life of his now not sure if beloved wife, it is anticipated that the law of the land shall be implemented to the hilt thus see that proper punishment worthy of the crime is meted.
While stiff punishment shall go a long way in deterring increasing acts of brutal Gender based Violence-GBV in the country , the big question that time alone will tell is,
Will the butchering Burao man be charged under local customary or the national law?
While application of the national law shall be the most punitive thus deterrence to similar GBV crimes the norm mostly utilized is the customary law one which determines that the family of a murdered man is paid 100 camels while 50 are paid for a woman in blood money.
Though the above number of camels in blood-money would be of much value to a needy family the payment is nowadays given a legal monetary value of 500,000 SL Sh equivalent to around $80.
Without argument with customary laws of the land tie irony of applying this punishment is that the Burao wife butcher like many others before him shall be back in our streets in a few months and mostly likely marry another innocent girl whose fate might end as that of the deceased.
This said and done it is hoped that the many women organizations in the country shall for once lobbying for the national law to be applied in the case of Butcher Muhumed Ahmed and the state.
