ADEN: Al Qaeda militants have stoned a woman to death in a southeastern Yemeni city that they control after accusing her of adultery and prostitution, several witnesses said on Monday.

The militants on Sunday “placed the woman in a hole in the middle of the courtyard of a military building and stoned her to death in the presence of dozens of residents” of Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, one witness said.

A local journalist at the scene confirmed the rare stoning, saying that the gunmen prevented photography of the execution.

“This was the first time we have seen such a thing,” another witness said.

A copy of the purported verdict issued by the so-called Hadramawt court of Al Qaeda’s Ansar al-Sharia in December said the married woman had “confessed in front of the judges to committing adultery”.

The verdict said the woman also admitted “without any coercion that she practised prostitution, as a pimp... and that she worked with a group of women in brothels”.

She also confessed to smoking hashish, it added.

The verdict said that the woman was sentenced to be stoned to death for “committing adultery as a married woman... and eighty lashes for consuming hashish”.

On Friday, Al Qaeda militants killed a woman in the southern port city of Aden after accusing her of practising sorcery, a security source said.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2016