Hargeisa (Puntland Post) – Police in the breakaway northern Somalia region of Somaliland have arrested a man for cannibalism after residents discovered the severed head of a child in a remote village in the region, officials said Tuesday.
Ahmed Mohamud Gutale, the police commissioner of the Togdher region said that the Ethnic Oromo man was arrested after villagers alerted the police about a ‘severed’ head of a local boy whose body was found near the man’s home in an isolated area.
Mr. Gutale told reporters that the man was arrested after residents raised alarm about the man’s ‘suspicious’ movements.
With no specific offense of cannibalism in Somaliland law, officials said that the man would be tried on charges of human ‘flesh-eating’.
Police officials have also raised the possibility of getting the man under a psychiatric test to determine his mental state.
The arrest has sent shockwave across the region which has seen few cases of cannibalism since it declared a unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991.
The cannibalism belief spans dozens of years across Somalia as many parents believe that cannibals have snatched their missing children to ‘suck’ the blood off their bodies.
