Somali Islamic militants execute two teenage girls

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA - Somalia's most powerful Islamist insurgents, the Al-Shabab, executed two teenage girls on Wednesday after deciding that they were spies.

The teenagers -- one 18, the other 14 or 15 -- were shot by 10 masked executioners in Belet Weyne, near the border with Ethiopia, witnesses said. Pickup trucks with loudspeakers drove into the town, ordering horrified residents to watch the executions and warning them against taking photos. One woman fainted as the girls were gunned down.

The Al-Shabab official in the town, Sheik Yusuf Ali Ugas, said that "the two girls were found guilty of spying for the Ethiopian government."

Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers remained in Somalia for the next three years before withdrawing, and some of the Somali government forces fighting the Al-Shabab -- which controls most of south and central Somalia and is linked to Al-Qaida -- are supported by Ethiopia.

Ugas said the teenagers -- Ayan Mohamed Jama and Huriyo Ibrahim -- were not the only ones in Al-Shabab custody, adding, "There are many people now in Al-Shabab prisons." He also sent a warning to Ethiopia, saying that the Al-Shabab knew "all the informants serving for the Ethiopian government."

Townspeople argued that the girls were innocent. The girls, they said, were caught in a cross-fire just outside Belet Weyne, where both government forces and the Al-Shabab are positioned. Many Somalis try to reach Yemen and Saudi Arabia to escape the violence.

"When the fighting started between the Al-Shabab and the government forces just outside Belet Weyne, the girls had to flee to the bush, where they were finally caught," a resident said.

The Somali transitional federal government condemned the executions, arguing that the girls had not been given the right to a legal defense nor had their parents even been informed. "This act of killing innocent children does not have Islamic and humanitarian justifications."

Ayan's father, Mohamed Jama, said he went to try and see his daughter but was not allowed to. "I am shocked and cannot say more," he said.

Osman Ahmed, one of Huriyo's cousins, said the girls came from poor families who could not afford to send them to school. "There was no way uneducated young girls could spy for anybody," Ahmed said.

A local elder, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals, said the girls' so-called trial was a sham. "No evidence was presented," he said. "I think the execution was only meant to show the cruelty of Al-Shabab militants so the residents in the region are terrified."