Bloomberg
By Hamsa Omar
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was buried in the ground up to her neck and her head covered with a black sack before she was executed yesterday, Yusuf Abdi Mohamed, a resident who attended the public event, said in a phone interview today from Kismayo, 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of the capital, Mogadishu.
``The evidence came from her side and she officially confirmed her guilt, while she told us that she is happy with the punishment under Islamic law,'' Sheikh Hayakalah, the Sharia court judge, said in remarks broadcast on Radio Shabelle, a Mogadishu-based broadcaster, today.
Duhulow had earlier confessed to the offense, Mohamed cited Sheikh Hayakalah, the court judge, as saying at the stoning.
It was the first such execution in Kismayo since the Islamist al-Shabaab militia captured the city in August. Shariah courts operate under a code of Islamic principles first established in the Arab world by the Muslim prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Adultery is banned by Shariah law.
Somalia is in its 18th year of civil war and hasn't had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Violence has escalated since Ethiopian troops helped Somalia's United Nations-backed government oust the Islamic Courts Union militia from southern and central parts of the country in January 2007.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Johannesburg at [email protected].
Source: Bloomberg, Oct 28, 2008