Revived Somali Law Spells End for ‘Bandit of Baidoa’ : Africa: The trial and punishment of a murderous thief suggest order is returning to the ravaged nation.

Few doubted that Gutalle, the Bandit of Baidoa, had lived up to his name. He was the chief of extortion at Baidoa airport, shaking down international relief agencies for hundreds of thousands of dollars in protection money as they sought to feed Somalia’s starving millions.

He killed at least 32 people, among them 17 women and children whom he mowed down in broad daylight with a battle-wagon outfitted with razor-blade bumpers. He ordered his driver to stop the vehicle, then to slam it into reverse to complete the job, dozens of eyewitnesses in the southern Somali town said.

But through two brutal years of civil war--which spawned starvation and created anarchy that left 300,000 Somalis dead and erased the last traces of law in this devastated nation--few thought that the notorious Bandit of Baidoa would ever pay for his crimes.

Then, something extraordinary happened this week.

Gutalle was arrested by the newly recommissioned Baidoa auxiliary police. The official charge: “carnage.” He was tried in Baidoa’s newly rebuilt court. He was convicted by a newly reappointed three-judge panel. Gutalle was sentenced that very day to 20 years in the newly reconstructed Baidoa jail.

But it didn’t end there. There were immediate appeals--from both sides. Gutalle’s lawyer pushed for acquittal, maintaining that his man was innocent. The prosecution appealed for the death penalty.

Finally, on Tuesday, a panel of six more newly appointed judges heard the case and ruled for the prosecution. Within half an hour, Gutalle was executed by Baidoa’s newly appointed police auxiliary firing squad.

It was a landmark case in a nation where there have been no trials, no police and no law for more than two years. This was an encouraging, symbolic victory for order over anarchy on the eve of the final ceremony officially marking the end of the American military intervention to save Somalia from its own ruin.

“This was an extraordinarily important event in which a community was willing to come forward and, in an orderly, legal way, make complaints against a member of their own community who wielded considerable power, then saw it through to the legal end,” one U.N. official in Mogadishu said. “And I think it’s vitally important that word now has gotten out that there is a judicial system again in Somalia.”

But there was more to the case of the Bandit of Baidoa than its powerful message of confidence-building for millions of Somalis. They, of course, are aching for a new era of peace, a time when they can also be free of the dozens of armed bandit gangs that continue to challenge the United Nations’ multinational peace-making force now patrolling the country.

From beginning to end, Gutalle’s prosecution embodied what most U.N. and American experts attempting to rebuild the Somali nation say is a first, critical step toward an urgent need: a national police force and a criminal justice system that can restore the rule of law and usher in even a semblance of government to reclaim Somalia’s sovereignty.

“I think the greatest and most immediate challenge in Somalia right now is to rebuild the institutions that will restore the rule of law in this country,” said one U.S. official in Mogadishu.

That, in fact, topped the list of the American military’s priorities in its nearly five-month intervention here--the concerted but daunting effort to lay the groundwork for a new national police force and court system.

Although staying within a U.S. law that prevents them from directly assisting foreign police without congressional waiver, Marine commanders in Mogadishu helped reorganize and rearm what were--even under ousted Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre--largely independent, highly professional police forces in key towns and in the capital.

Dubbed “auxiliary security forces,” they are now armed largely with automatic weapons that U.S.-led forces seized during patrols, on raids and at checkpoints. Somalia’s new law-enforcement personnel, by and large, are former police. They now are seen as the backbone of a future, civilian force to be formally established by a Somali police committee, formed under U.S. supervision.

Military forces under American command also were instrumental in the reconstruction of police stations, jails and courts in the Somali countryside.

Canadian troops based in the once-lawless town of Belet Huen played a key role in helping town elders rebuild their local justice system; the Australian battalion that kept the peace in Baidoa is widely credited with creating the aura of security that made possible the prosecution of the Bandit of Baidoa.

But in a nation where virtually every concrete structure was damaged by looters or ravaged by artillery rounds, the effort will require more than men. The United Nations has allocated only slightly more than $7 million for reconstruction of Somali police stations and courts; U.S. law prohibits direct American funding for the project.

In an attempt to aid the effort, however, the State Department tracked down a Washington lawyer who served as a Peace Corps adviser to the Somali national police more than three decades ago, before the Siad Barre era. His job in 1962 was to help draft the Somali Penal Code.

The American government financed his recent two-week tour of Somalia, during which he produced a 43-page report on how to rebuild the Somali justice system as it was before dictatorship perverted it and anarchy erased it.

Based on his recommendations, the United Nations is now finishing a draft of a multimillion-dollar, one-year plan to rebuild as many as 80 police stations and see to it that 10,000 police are added as the cutting edge of the country’s reconstruction.

“It’s a daunting task, and this is an expensive deal,” said a U.N. official in Mogadishu. “This is going to be a long-term effort, and I hope we’ll all be patient and not get too discouraged too early.

“But, if the Somalis manage to nail a few more Gutalles--and, believe me, there are a lot more notorious bandits still out there all over the country--I think you’ll see a lot more encouraging signs in the weeks and months to come.”