Somali fundamentalists whip bra-wearing women for being a 'deception to men'

ISLAMIC militants who control much of Somalia's war-battered capital are beating up women who break their strict interpretation of sharia law, witnesses said yesterday.

Fundamentalists from the Al-Shabaab group, which has seized half of Mogadishu, have attacked women who wear bras or who fail to don headscarves, reports said.

Officials, who declined to be named, said that 130 people, including men caught chewing dried khat leaves, a mild narcotic, had been rounded up over the past two days in a clampdown on those seen to be disobeying sharia law.

Al-Shabaab, which has been described as the Taleban of Africa, is currently fighting Somalia's Western-backed transitional administration headed by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Most observers believe Ahmed is only holding on to his share of Mogadishu because of the protection of peacekeepers from the African Union.

Broadcaster CNN yesterday revealed that hooded gunmen from Al-Shabaab had last week seized 50 women who were found unveiled at a Mogadishu market.

One of them told the station: "Just today, Al-Shabaab dispatched men with whips to the streets around Bakara market and they are flogging any woman who is found not wearing socks (to cover their feet]." The woman, a maize trader, declined to be named, fearing for her life. "Most of these women were vegetable traders, so are poor and can't afford to buy veils," she said.

Another 80 Somali civilians were detained in the southwestern town of Luuq, near the Kenyan and Ethiopian borders, "because they turned deaf ear to orders we imposed on the town", said the local Al-Shabaab commander Sheikh Hussien al-Iraqi.

The United States has officially listed Al-Shabaab – sometimes known as Shebab – as a terrorist organisation because of its support of and ties to al-Qaeda. The militants have made their own interpretations of sharia, coming to the view that bras amount to "a deception to men".

Kenya, meanwhile, is said to be worried that the group will try to export its brand of Islamic extremism into its other Muslim areas.

However, United Nations officials believe that public support for the group is dwindling thanks to its clampdown on bras and khat leaves, as well as its disagreements with other Islamist movements.