Ethiopians Protest Conviction of Murderer

[Wyatt_Junker]

Is Ed Asner somewhere in the background?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pictures/20061118EthiopianFGMDemo1.jpg


This picture, released by protest organizers, show hundreds of Ethiopians taking to the streets of the capital to protest the landmark conviction by a US court of an Ethiopian man for sexually mutilating his two-year-old daughter with scissors. (AFP/HO)


http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23397_Ethiopians_Protest_Conviction_of_Muti lator&only

[DeclinetoState]

Not so fast, folks:

First, Khalid Adem was an accused mutilator, not murderer.

Second, if the facts are as argued by the protestors (no certainty, obviously), they probably have a point.

Sat Nov 18, 3:35 PM ET

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - Hundreds of Ethiopians took to the streets of the capital to protest the landmark conviction by a US court of an Ethiopian man for sexually mutilating his two-year-old daughter with scissors.

Organizers said some 2,000 people turned out in Addis Ababa for a march in support of Khalid Adem, a 31-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who was convicted of female genital mutilation by a court in the southern US state of Georgia.

Adem was sentenced on November 1 to 10 years in prison for aggravated battery and cruelty to children for the 2001 crime, which was not discovered for two years until the mother took her daughter to a doctor.

"We are protesting against the verdict, we believe it is not justice, there was no evidence," said Adem's brother, Adel Adem, who organized the protest to demand his immediate release from prison.

"It is a false accusation, the jury was not fair," he told AFP. "We think that he is innocent. His sister and his niece are not circumcized. My brother is against circumcision, and our family too."

Adem's family joined a chorus of condemnation, saying their son was framed by a marriage gone sour.
Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061118/wl_africa_afp/ethiopiauscrimewomen_061118203518)

The protest is not in support of genital mutilation, but against the conviction. I wouldn't be surprised if the kid was mutilated by her own mother in an effort to get at the father. The fact (if it is a fact; we should never assume anything here) that it was two years after the act that the mutilation was discovered makes me suspicious.

[Wolfcounsel]

"The protest is not in support of genital mutilation, but against the conviction." --DeclinetoState

I'll bet you 100,000 to one the assholes are protesting America's forbidding of female genital mutilation.