Somali teen executed for adultery 'had been raped'

The United Nations said today that a Somali stoned to death by Islamists on accusations of adultery was a 13-year-old girl who had apparently been raped while visiting her grandmother.

In the first such public killing by the militants for about two years, she was placed in a hole and stoned to death on 28 October in rebel-held Kismayu port in front of hundreds of spectators after local leaders said she was guilty under sharia law.

Witnesses said at the time that the victim was a 23-year-old woman.

"However, reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while travelling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital Mogadishu," UN children's agency UNICEF said.

"Following the assault, she sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death," it added in a statement. "A child was victimised twice - first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice."

UNICEF said the incident highlighted the vulnerability of girls and women in Somalia, which has suffered civil conflict for the last 17 years. In the latest cycle, Islamist rebels are fighting the government and their Ethiopian military backers.

Islamist spokesmen could not be immediately reached to respond to the UN accusation.

Human rights group Amnesty International identified the girl as Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow and said she was killed by 50 men who stoned her to death in a stadium in Kismayu, in front of around 1,000 spectators.

Her father and other sources told Amnesty International that she had been raped by three men.

When the family attempted to report the rape to the al-Shabab militia who control Kismayu, she was accused of adultery and was detained. None of the men she accused of rape was arrested.

"This was not justice, nor was it an execution. This child suffered an horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayu," David Copeman, Amnesty's Somalia campaigner, said in a statement.

"This killing is yet another human rights abuse committed by the combatants ... in Somalia, and again demonstrates the importance of international action to investigate and document such abuses, through an International Commission of Inquiry," he said.