By Simon Freeman and agencies

Hooded and bound, Omar Hussein awaits his execution (shabellenews.com)

A Somali teenager publicly hacked his father's killer to death in a punishment sanctioned under Islamic law, heightening Somalia's status as a failed country in the eyes of the West.

Hundreds of people gathered in Mogadishu to watch the court-ordered execution. Witnesses said that Mohamed Moalim, 16, approached the condemned man Omar Hussein, who was hooded and tied to a pole, and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest, neck and head.

Hussein had been found guilty of murdering the boy's father, a teacher, in a similar manner two months ago. The execution was the first to be held in the Somalian capital for a decade and was hailed by local Islamic spiritual leaders as a sign that order was being restored.

The execution was carried out as the British Home Office faced mounting pressure over its decision to spare Mustaf Jama, a Somalian convicted of robbery, from deportation three months before he allegedly shot dead a policewoman, Sharon Beshenivsky, 38, in November last year.

After carrying out the killing, Mohamed Moalim calmly told: "My father’s killer is now gone. I am happy now because I killed the man who killed my father."

Sheikh Ibrahim Mohamed Nur, an imam in the Bermuda district of the capital, said: "Islam is the only solace to the overcome the difficulties we are facing. The justice of Allah has been implemented and there is no better justice than what Allah reccommended."

"The public is aware from today on that killers won’t go unpunished as they did in the past," he said.

A young bystander who gave his name only as Mohamoud said: "You cannot stop violence by another sort of violence."

Graphic photographs of the spectacle were posted on Somali internet sites. It came amid rising fears of an escalation in the tensions between militia loyal to the courts and an alliance of warlords devoted to curbing their influence.

Western intelligence agencies are growing increasingly concerned about the creeping influence of al-Qaeda on lawless Somalia, where Islamic extremists are believed to be harbouring senior figures from the terrorist network.

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said today that Jama, still wanted over the Beshenivsky murder, had not been deported to Somalia because an immigration panel had considered it it was simply too dangerous.

"When he came out he was considered for deportation but in Somalia the government had fallen apart, it was being controlled by warlords and there was a threat that if he took a plane into the capital, Mogadishu, not only would he have been blown out of the air but the pilot of the plane would have been," Mr Reid said.

"So it was decided on balance they should not deport him in this case."

Mogadishu’s Islamic courts came into existence law in 1994, three years after the mainly Muslim country of 10 million was plunged into anarchy when Mohamed Siad Barre's 22-year presidency was brought to an end after two years of civil war.

In 1995, they ordered the stoning to death of several people convicted of adultery and the amputation of limbs for thieves but Tuesday’s killing was believed to be the first public execution in a decade.

Source: Times Online, May 3, 2006