Teenager executes his father's murderer

Published on Wednesday 3 May 2006 00:53

A SOMALI teenager stabbed his father's killer to death yesterday in a public execution ordered by an Islamic court.

Omar Hussein, 45, had been convicted of killing Sheik Osman Moallim, a teacher, in the capital, Mogadishu, after a dispute over the education of his 16-year-old son.

A court ordered that Sheik Moallim's son, Mohamed, should execute the killer in the same manner as his father was murdered.

Hundreds of people watched the teenager stab Hussein several times in the chest and throat at the Koranic school where his father had worked, witnesses said.

"I am happy now because I killed the man who killed my father," Mohamed Moallim said afterwards.

Hussein, tied up and flanked by Islamic court militia, shouted: "There is no God but Allah," as he was killed.

Mogadishu's Islamic courts have created a semblance of order in the formerly lawless capital by providing justice under sharia law, which states that anyone who commits murder should also die.

The country plunged into chaos in 1991, when warlords ousted the military dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre.

A fledging interim government, formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004, is weakened by internal power struggles and has little control over the nation of ten million people. Most of the population are Muslim.

The execution was believed to be Somalia's first in public in recent years.