Free Republic

BAMAKO, Mali -- An al-Qaida-linked Islamist militant group in control of northern Mali stoned to death a couple accused of engaging in extramarital affairs, the group's spokesman said. The couple were publicly executed in the remote town of Aguelhok, near the vast West African nation's northern border with Algeria, on Sunday, a spokesman for the Ansar Dine group told Reuters. "These two people were married and had extra-conjugal relations. Our men on the ground in Aguelhok applied shariah (Islamic law)," said Sanda Ould Bounama, reached by telephone on Monday.

Both Malian security officials and Ansar Dine's spokesman have confirmed that foreign fighters are continuing to travel to northern Mali, where al Qaeda-linked jihadists from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJOA), Ansar Dine, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have been in control since February. From Magharebia (which has done an excellent job of covering the conflict in Mali): "Hundreds of jihadists, mostly Sudanese and Sahrawis [Africans from Western Sahara], have arrived as reinforcements to face an offensive by Malian forces and their allies," AFP quoted a Malian security source as saying on Tuesday (October...