WOMAN LASHED IN SOMALIA OVER CANNABIS

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Islamic leaders in Mogadishu on Thursday gave a
woman 11 lashes for selling cannabis, the first female to receive such
punishment since the fundamentalist rulers took over the capital in
June.

The woman, who throughout the beating insisted she was innocent, was
flogged alongside five other men at the Yassin Square in Mogadishu in
front of several hundred people. The small bundle of cannabis, worth
around $1 on the streets of the capital, was burned before the crowd.

"The reason we punished them was that we want to stop people selling
and using drugs," said a local security official, Sheik Omar Hussein.
"We believe as Islamists that people should stay away from drugs."

The imposition of strict religious rule has sparked fears of an
emerging, Taliban-style regime. The United States accuses Somalia's
Islamic leaders of harboring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly
bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Somalia has not had a police force or judiciary for 16 years since the
warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and
then turned on each other, carving much of the country into armed
camps ruled by violence and clan law.

The Islamic leaders stepped into the vacuum in Mogadishu and most of
southern Somalia, projecting themselves as a source of stability.

Late Tuesday, Islamic militiamen raided a makeshift video hall in
Mogadishu, beating up viewers watching an Indian film. Like the
Taliban, members of the group appear to see any secular entertainment
as un-Islamic.

Somalia has a weak transitional government set up two years ago with
U.N.-backing, but it has been unable to assert its authority beyond
Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu, and could only watch
helplessly as Islamic militants seized the capital in June.