Zabiha News

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“Public anger at the recent stoning of a 13-year-old girl in Somalia shows the growing resentment towards radical Islamists who have gained control of much of the south and centre of the country.

Insurgents from the militant group al-Shabab are seen as authoritarian and unaccountable - unlike the Islamists who were in control of the capital, Mogadishu, in 2006.

Asha Ibrahim Dhuhulow was stoned to death for adultery in the southern port city of Kismayo, which was taken control by al-Shabab and its allies in August.

Her 62-year-old aunt told the BBC that the teenager had in fact been raped by three armed men - and she took Asha to the police station to report it.

Several days later, after two suspects had been arrested, she was asked to return to the station with her niece.

To her surprise the girl was taken into custody too.

“I tried to speak to the police but they said they were not talking,” she said.

Three days later, after Asha had been tried in an Islamist court, she was stoned to death.

“They said that the girl had chatted up these men and had confessed to adultery,” she said.

But the aunt said the authorities clearly failed to notice her age, how mentally disturbed she was by her experience, or her history of mental illness.

“She was only 13 years old. I have got her card from Hagarder refugee camp which has her age on it. She might have looked a bit older, but you could tell her age by talking to her,” she said …

The Islamists were reported to have announced their verdict the day before the stoning from cars with loudspeakers.

But Asha’s aunt was not informed of the court’s decision - despite repeated visits to the police station.

“I was not even told that she was to be killed, I just heard it from people after it happened.

“I don’t know what crime she committed other than being raped; and I was not even allowed to see her body,” she said.

Al-Shabab in Kismayo has refused attempts by the BBC to discuss the stoning.

It is almost two years since the Ethiopian-backed interim government ousted the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which had ruled much of Somalia for nearly six months.

In 2006, the UIC was generally welcomed for the law and order it brought to a country bedevilled by more than a decade of civil war and clan fighting.

UIC fighters launched an insurgency following what many Somalis regarded as an Ethiopian invasion. Its youth and military wing, al-Shabab, gained notoriety for its determination, despite its much smaller numbers …

But many fear that law and order is not al-Shabab’s priority.

“They are holding this region with the barrel of the gun, and it has nothing to do with Islam,” the Hiiran political activist said.”