|
Rapists will be stoned to death
26/06/2006 22:33 - (SA)
Mogadishu - Somalia's newly powerful
Islamists on Monday said they will stone to death five rapists,
in what some fear is the latest sign of a plan to install a
hardline Islamic regime like Afghanistan's Taliban.
The punishments, like others carried out by the Islamists in
their sharia courts in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere,
follow the naming of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys - on a UN list
of al-Qaeda associates - to a top post over the weekend.
Aweys, a former army colonel who in the 1990s led militant
Islamists in failed campaigns in Somalia but has denied any
al-Qaeda links, was named head of the Council of Islamic Courts.
The council is a parliament for the Islamists, whose
well-trained militias seized Mogadishu from US-backed warlords
on June 5 after months of fighting that killed at least 350.
The rapists were to be stoned to death in Jowhar, which the
Islamists took in the last phase of a campaign that saw them
seize a strategic swathe of Somalia from the coastal capital
northwest nearly to the Ethiopian border.
"Five men who raped four women on June 22 will be stoned to
death today (on Monday) in accordance with the Islamic sharia. They
have pleaded guilty to the crime and also have been identified
by the victims," Siyad Mohamed, a militia leader linked to
Islamic courts, told Reuters by phone from Jowhar.
Mohamed later said the execution had been delayed as the
courts looked to arrest a sixth suspect. He said it was not
clear when the sentences would be carried out. Somalia's weak interim government and the Islamists, in
talks mediated by Sudan in Khartoum, last week agreed to
recognise each other and meet again on July 15. Both sides are
deeply suspicious of the other's intentions.
|
News
