TEEN EXECUTES FATHER'S KILLER UNDER ISLAMIC LAW
May 2, 2006

A Somali teenager killed a man convicted by an Islamic court of murdering
his father in what is believed to be Mogadishu's first public execution under
Sharia Islamic law in a decade.

At a heavily attended event ordered and supervised by the court,
16-year-old Mohamed Moalim approached the condemned man, Omar Hussein,
who was hooded and tied to a pole, and stabbed him to death, witnesses said.

A crowd of several hundred watched as Moalim repeatedly knifed Hussein in
the chest, neck and head in accordance with the court's ruling that found him
guilty of murdering the boy's father two months previously, they said.

"My father's killer is now gone," Moalim calmly told AFP at the conclusion of
the open-air execution in Mogadishu's south-central Bermuda neighborhood.

Moalim's relatives said both they and Hussein's family had accepted the verdict
of the court, which was hailed by Islamic spiritual leaders in Bermuda as just and
a sign that order was being restored to the lawless capital.

"Islam is the only solace to overcome the difficulties we are facing,"
said Sheikh Ibrahim Mohamed Nur, an imam. "The justice of Allah has been
implemented and there is no better justice than what Allah recommended."
"The public is aware in Bermuda from today on that killers won't go unpunished
as they did in the past," he told reporters at Agence France Presse.

But others, including some from Hussein's extended family who complained
they had not had a chance to pay compensation to Moalim's relatives and possibly
head off the execution, expressed concern.

"Our man was not given justice," said Ismail Haji Hassan. "You cannot stop
violence by another sort of violence," said a young bystander who gave his name
only as Mohamoud.

(Source: Agence France Presse)