A court operated by Somalia’s hardline insurgent Al-Shabaab group has on Sunday handed jail sentences to five of the group’s fighters who were accused of stealing money from a local money bureau in the restive capital Mogadishu, Radio Garowe reports.

The “ad-hoc" Islamic Court at Mogadishu’s Bakara Market found the five men guilty of making off with some USD $9,260 and sentenced then one year each, according to one of Al-Shabaab’s Judges called Sheikh Abdulxaq

The court also delivered sentences to six other robbers who went away with $$33,400 before disappearing to government-controlled areas, he adds.  

Al-Shabaab, which controls much of southern and central Somalia, has previously carried out public executions, amputations and floggings in various parts of the war-torn nation.

However, today’s judgment was different because it involved the group’s fighters who were tasked to ‘keep and implement’ the Sharia law in the country. 

The most memorable event happened Last year October  when a Somali teenage girl Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was stoned to death on by dozens of Al-Shabaab militiamen in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo sparking international condemnation.

The group, which is in the list of Washington’s most wanted foreign terrorist group is fighting the UN-backed government in a bid to overrun the Horn of African nation and subject it to strict version of Sharia Law.

GAROWE ONLINE