MOGADISHU The Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab group's religious police in the Somali city of Kismayo flogged a man for flirting and another man for having a “secret marriage”, an official said on Monday.

They received 15 and 39 lashes respectively in public during the weekend in Kismayo, a southern harbour city under the Shebab administration where Sharia law is enforced.

“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” said Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, told AFP.

“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.

Youths in some Muslim countries, where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive, sometimes resort to a secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.

The custom keeps the matrimony a secret, from the couples' parents or from another wife, and is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.

“The punishment was only to show that people will be held responsible for violating Sharia (Islamic law),” Sheikh Mohamed said. “We are here to correct deviant social behaviour and force the people to implement Sharia to the full.”

“Many people came to watch these two boys being punished. They were both flogged on the back as they stood facing the crowd of onlookers,” local resident Abdi Gure said.

The Shebab, whose leader Sheikh Mohamed Mukhtar Abdirahman (Abu Zubeyr), pledged his allegiance in 2008 to Al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, also has arrested women selling khat, a mild narcotic leaf popular with Somali men.

Last week, the Shebab religious police also arrested several men for shaving their beard which is also considered a violation of the Sharia. -  AFP