Somalia's newly powerful Islamists said on Monday they will stone to death five rapists, in what some fear is the latest sign of a plan to install a hardline Islamic authority like Afghanistan's Taliban.
The punishments, like others carried out by the Islamists in their sharia courts in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere, follow the naming of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys -- on a UN list of al-Qaeda associates -- to a top post over the weekend.
Aweys, a former army colonel who in the 1990s led militant Islamists in failed campaigns in Somalia but has denied any al-Qaeda links, was named head of the Council of Islamic Courts.
Aweys said he will only support a government based on the Koran.
"Somalia is a Muslim nation and its people are also Muslim, 100 percent. Therefore any government we agree on would be based on the holy Koran and the teachings of our Prophet Mohammed," Aweys said on Monday in a telephone interview.
The 71-year-old Aweys, speaking from his home in central Somalia, condemned any attempts to install a Western-style democracy and said he is under no obligation to abide by the wishes of the West.
"It is not compulsory for us to hate what the Westerners hate," he said.
"Our relationship with the US administration will depend on how the US treats us. If it treats us well, we will also treat them well. If it behaves badly, it will be responsible," the former military colonel said, without elaborating.
The US would have no contact with Aweys, but has made no decision about relations with the group as a whole, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"Of course we are not going to work with somebody like that and of course we would be troubled if this is an indicator of the direction that this group would go in," McCormack said. "But again let's wait, let's see what the collective leadership of this group does."
The council is a parliament for the Islamists, whose well-trained militias seized Mogadishu from US-backed warlords on June 5 after months of fighting that killed at least 350.
The rapists were to be stoned to death in Jowhar, which the Islamists took in the last phase of a campaign that saw them seize a strategic swathe of Somalia from the coastal capital northwest nearly to the Ethiopian border.
"Five men who raped four women on June 22 will be stoned to death [Monday] in accordance with the Islamic Shariah. They have pleaded guilty to the crime and also have been identified by the victims," Siyad Mohamed, a militia leader linked to Islamic courts, told reporters by phone from Jowhar.
Mohamed later said the execution had been delayed as the courts looked to arrest a sixth suspect. He said it was not clear when the sentences would be carried out.
The Islamist victory dealt an embarrassing public setback to Washington's counter-terrorism campaign, as its support for the much-despised warlords gave the Islamists popular backing.
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