Islamist cops nab 22 in raid on Somali smokers
Islamic religious police on Tuesday arrested 22 people for smoking in the Somali port of Kismayo, where they will be flogged if found guilty of violating a new tobacco ban, officials said.
Those detained were nabbed just days after local Islamist officials announced a total ban on the use of tobacco in the key southern port, in a new sign of their increasingly strict application of Sharia law.
"We started raids against tobacco users and we have arrested 22 people so far," Kismayo police deputy chief Mohmaed Abdulkadir Jibril told reporters here, about 500km south of the capital Mogadishu. "Some of them were smoking cigarettes while others were using tobacco leaves when they were caught," he said.
[The anti-smoking raids are the latest indication that Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, which is now girding for war with the weak government, is intent on imposing a fundamentalist version of Koranic law in its territory.]
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