According to local officials and witnesses in Mogadishu, militants who control parts of Somalia’s capital city are beating women in broad daylight for violating their radical brand of Islamic law.

According to a female maize trader at the Mogadishu market, “Just today, Al-Shabaab dispatched men with whips to the streets around Bakara market and they are flogging any woman who is found not wearing socks.”

For security reasons, she did not want to be named.

According to witnesses and officials, more than 130 people, including women who were not wearing headscarves and men chewing dried khat leaves, have been detained in the past two days for violating Al-Shabaab’s interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law.

The maize trader added that on Wednesday, Hooded Al-Shabaab gunmen rounded up 50 women from Mogadishu’s Bakara market for not wearing the veil that is required for women under some interpretations of Islamic law.

She said, “Most of these women were vegetable traders, so they are poor and can’t afford to buy veils for 600,000 shillings” [about $23].

(article source: CNN, photo source: Somaliweyn.org)