Al-Shabaab militants execute two young men in public

MOGADISHU, Sunday

Two young men were today executed in public at Maka, 110 km south of Mogadishu by the al-Shabaab authority in Lower Shabelle region.

The men had been sentenced by an Islamic court run by the movement.

Al-Shabaab officials at SYL Football Stadium, where the firing squad took place, said that the men were apprehended three months ago.

They also said that Mohamed Hussein Ahmed, who came from Marka and Hussein Aba Ali from Mogadishu, pleaded guilty to charges of spying for the Transitional Federal Government.

Were spying

Sheikh Suldan Ala Mohamed, the Lower Shabelle Islamist Authority’s education and promotion officer, said that Ahmed, 20 and Aba Ali, 21, were spying for the TFG.

“We have been holding them for three months. We investigated and they confessed.”

Residents of Marka confirmed that al-Shabaab loyalists had been moving around the town on Saturday evening inviting people through loudhailers to come to the stadium to witness the execution.

Consequently, hundreds of people turned up to witness the mid-morning execution.

Schools in the coastal town suspended classes so that students could go to the stadium for the occasion.

Similar executions for alleged spying for the TFG and even for Western agencies have occurred in parts of Somalia controlled by Islamists opposing the government.

Kismayu, Mogadishu and other towns have been the scenes of people facing firing squads.

The US says the group, which wants to topple President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s fragile UN-backed government and impose its own strict version of Islamic law, is al-Qaeda’s proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state.

Courts run by al-Shabaab clerics have ordered executions, floggings and amputations in recent months, mostly in Kismayu further south, but also in rebel-held districts of the capital.

The insurgents have also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.

One witness in Marka, Ali Hussein, said by telephone that residents were forced to watch as the youths killed by firing squad.

“The two teenagers were accused of spying, but we cannot judge if they were guilty for ourselves,” Mr Hussein told Reuters.
“One of the boys did not die easily, so about eight masked al-Shabaab men went close and opened fire on him.”

Fighting in Somalia has killed 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven 1.5 million from their homes, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

Western security agencies say the drought-ravaged nation has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the region and beyond.

Al-Shabaab has said it will strike the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks on Thursday by African Union peacekeepers from those countries that killed at least 30 people in and around Mogadishu’s Bakara market.

Earlier this month, the insurgent group organised a Koran recital competition for youths in Kismayu and awarded the 17-year-old winner an AK-47 rifle, two hand grenades, a computer and an anti-tank mine as prizes.

The group urged Somali parents to let children learn how to handle weapons and fight what it calls the apostate government.