Islamists stone to death Somali woman for adultery !

Somalia: Woman Stoned to Death for Adultery After Sharia Court Found her Guilty, Buried up to her Neck While 50 Men Pelted her Head With Stones.

Thousands of people gathered Monday to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court in the southern port of Kismayo found her guilty of adultery....

Somali Islamists have stoned to death a woman accused of adultery in the first such public killing by the militants for about two years.

The 23-year-old woman was executed late on Monday in front of hundreds of people in the southern port of Kismayu, which the Islamist insurgents captured in August, witnesses said.

Guards opened fire when a relative ran forward, killing a child, they said.

"A woman in green veil and black mask was brought in a car as we waited to watch the merciless act of stoning," one local resident, Abdullahi Aden, told Reuters.

"We were told she submitted herself to be punished, yet we could see her screaming as she was forcefully bound, legs and hands. A relative of hers ran towards her, but the Islamists opened fire and killed a child."

The Islamists last carried out public executions when they ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them at the end of that year, but they have waged an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign since then, gradually taking territory back.

As when they ruled Mogadishu in 2006, the Islamists now controlling the Kismayu area are again providing much-needed security, but also imposing fundamentalist practices such as banning entertainment seen as anti-Islamic.

Relatives of the woman executed in Kismayu, whom they named as Asha Ibrahim Dhuhulow, said she was unfairly treated.

"Our sister Aisha asked the Islamic Sharia court in Kismayo to be charged and punished for the crime she committed," local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah told the crowd.

"She admitted in front of the court to engaging in adulterous sexual intercourse," he added.

"She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply."

"The stoning was totally irreligious and illogical," said her sister, who asked not to be named. "Islam does not execute a woman for adultery unless four witnesses and the man with whom she committed sex are brought forward publicly."

Islamist leaders at the execution said the woman had breached Islamic law. They promised to punish the guard who had shot the child in the melee around the execution.

"We apologise for killing the child. And we promise we shall bring the one who opened fire before the courts and deal with him accordingly," one unnamed Islamist leader told the crowd.