How Should Police Investigate Online Incitement Without Suppressing Debate?
A controversial sermon is not automatically a security crime. Somaliland police need evidence of intent, reach and likely harm—not labels supplied by religious rivals.
Somaliland’s police face a difficult but manageable task: identifying online speech that could produce violence without turning legitimate religious or political disagreement into a criminal matter.
The guiding principle should be simple. Police must investigate conduct and credible threats—not theological identity, political criticism or unpopular opinion.
Start with a defined threshold
An investigation should require specific indicators, such as:
An intentional call for followers to attack an identifiable person or community.
Recruitment, fundraising or logistical assistance for a violent organization.
Instructions that materially facilitate an attack.
A credible threat supported by capability, preparation or operational contacts.
Repeated identification of targets in circumstances where violence is reasonably foreseeable.
Calling another scholar misguided, condemning government policy or advancing a controversial religious interpretation should not meet that threshold by itself.
The UN’s Rabat Plan recommends examining context, the speaker’s influence, intent, content, audience reach and the likelihood—including imminence—of resulting harm. It maintains a deliberately high threshold for criminalizing speech.
Preserve evidence before making arrests
Screenshots alone are vulnerable to alteration and often remove crucial context. Investigators should preserve the original post, account identifier, publication time, linked material and surrounding discussion.
Police must then establish who controlled the account. A person appearing in a profile picture is not necessarily the author. Reporting, quoting or criticizing extremist material must also be distinguished from endorsing it.
Where private messages, devices or subscriber records are required, investigators should obtain judicial authorization. Digital material must remain traceable through a documented chain of custody so prosecutors can demonstrate that it was not altered. UN guidance emphasizes preservation, lawful access and the integrity of electronic evidence.
Build safeguards into the investigation
Somaliland’s Constitution protects expression and media freedom. Police guidelines should therefore prohibit arrests based solely on anonymous complaints, edited clips or accusations such as “Khawarij” and “Al-Shabaab sympathizer.”
Prosecutors should review incitement cases before arrest. Courts should approve intrusive searches. Suspects should know the allegation, obtain counsel and challenge the evidence.
WARYATV Assessment
Heavy-handed policing can transform reckless speakers into political martyrs and push genuinely dangerous networks into harder-to-monitor spaces. Failure to act against credible incitement can be equally costly.
Somaliland needs intelligence-led investigation, judicial oversight and an evidentiary threshold that asks one decisive question: did the speaker intentionally create a credible risk of violence?
