US ‘spy’ executed by al-Qaeda

Somalia’s al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab militia publicly executed a man by a firing squad after accusing him of spying for the United States, the insurgents said yesterday.

Ahmed Ali Hussein, 44, was gunned down late Sunday at one of the rebels’ camps in the north of Mogadishu. The group said Hussein had been spying for the CIA in connection with a probe to find the perpetrators of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.

“We know so many people who claim to be Muslim scholars while spying on the Muslims. We will catch them and execute them in front of you like this man who confessed to have been working with the American intelligence agency,” said Ali Mohamed Hussein, a Shebab official.

The Shebab control large swathes of territory in the south and central Somalia and have imposed a strict brand of Islamic laws, with offenders often flogged or executed in public.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, German prosecutors said yesterday they have indicted a 54-year-old German man on charges of spying on the German section of the Falungong spiritual group on behalf of Chinese agents.

John K. was one of the founders of the German chapter of Falungong and took part in European and world conferences of the movement, which is banned in China, federal prosecutors said in a statement. From March 2006 onwards he allegedly passed to the Chinese secret services internal information about the group’s structure and activities, and emails from September 2008 at the latest.

China calls the Buddhist-inspired movement known for its meditative exercises an “evil cult.” The group says its practitioners are treated brutally in China and sometimes killed. Mr K. was indicted on January 17.