7 beheaded by Islamists in Somalia

Hawa, who also wanted her full name withheld, was at the police station with six other families who had been informed a relative had been executed. She told The Associated Press that her brother had been missing for about 20 days after being abducted from his house by masked men, and that she had just been informed that he had been beheaded.

Al-Shabab militia officials told her that the seven had been accused of either renouncing the Islamic religion or spying for the government, she said.

Punishments such as stonings, amputations and beheadings are historically rare in Somalia, which traditionally practices moderate Sufi Islam. But a more extremist form of jihadi Salafist Islam with its roots in Saudi Arabia has taken root during the chaotic warfare of recent years, strengthened by a recent influx of hundreds of foreign fighters.

Adherence to the strict form of Islam helped fighters attract outside funding and help build alliances between rival clans. An emphasis on traditional Islamic law also won support from many Somalis tired of being terrorized by bands of teenage gunmen. In 2006, an Islamist alliance seized the capital and much of the south and ruled for six months before being chased from power and launching the insurgency.

In the past year, the militants have reconquered key towns and swathes of the country, where they have carried out several whippings, amputations or executions. Among the incidents documented by Benedicte Goderiaux, a Somalia researcher for Amnesty International, are the stoning to death of a 13-year-old girl accused of adultery; the stoning to death of a man accused of rape, and several amputations of men accused of theft.

She believes the punishments serve dual purposes: they discourage potential rivals for power and reclaim the law-and-order mantle that first won the Islamists popular support. Somalia's last functioning government was overthrown in 1991, and since then the country has been fought over by packs of warlords.

"It's definitely linked to al-Shabab wanting to show or portray themselves as restoring law and order in the region they control," Goderiaux said. But "it's also linked to them wanting to terrorize the population under their control under the guise of applying sharia law."