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Ansar Al-Sharia tightens hold in Derna and formally establishes Islamic Court
[Libya Herald] Following its declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... (or Daesh), Derna's Shoura Council of Islamic Youth (SCIY), part of the local Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet... structure, has moved to formally institute an Islamic Court in the town. A Yemeni, variously named as Abu Al-Bara Al-Azadi or Abu Taleb Al-Jazrawi, is now said to head the court, housed in the public legal aid building next to the King Idris library. His assistant is said to be from Algeria. Over the weekend, it handed down a sentence of public flogging for a group of young men found guilty of alcohol abuse. The punishment was carried out on Saturday in the courtyard of the town's old mosque. In August, the SCIY carried out two public executions supposedly as a result of a Sharia court trial but illegal under Libyan law. It is meanwhile reported that Jazrawi has met with education authorities in Derna to demand that they stop teaching foreign languages, physics, chemistry and biology. In August, a wall was built across one of the town's university campuses to segregate male and female students. As part of the new Sharia legal system, illuminated Islamic State signs can now be seen around the town. One of the cop shoppes has a new sign up, reading "Islamic Police" in Arabic. Police vehicles too denote themselves as belonging to the Islamic Police. There was an earlier move to set up an Islamic court in Derna. In May, SCIY took over the same building, formerly the Qadaffy regime's People's Committee offices, and announced it would be converted into an Islamic court. However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... a few days later the sign on the building to that effect disappeared and nothing happened. At the time, a local official told the Libya Herald that there were problems because there were no qualified Sharia court judges in the country. They would have to be brought in from outside the country, he said. That issue now seems to have been dealt with. Posted by: Fred 2014-10-23 |
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