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A military court in Somalia has sentenced six Islamic State fighters from Morocco to death.<\/p>\n
The men will be executed by a firing squad if their appeal, which they have one month to file, is unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
“They came to Somalia to support Isis [IS} and destroy and shed blood,” the court’s deputy chairman, Col Ali Ibrahim Osman, told VOA Somali.<\/p>\n
The men’s lawyer said they had been misled into joining IS and were seeking to be deported to Morocco.<\/p>\n
It is the first time authorities in the semi-autonomous Puntland region have charged or sentenced foreigners for joining IS.<\/p>\n
The military court also gave an Ethiopian and a Somali 10-year prison sentences each, while freeing another Somali defendant due to insufficient evidence.<\/p>\n
One of the prosecutors told BBC Somali that the militants were arrested in the Cal-Miskaat mountains, east of Bosaso, Puntland’s commercial hub.<\/p>\n
The mountains are a stronghold of Islamic State, which has a base there.<\/p>\n
The Somali branch of IS was formed in 2015 by a group of defectors from the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabab group – the largest jihadist group in Somalia.<\/p>\n
It is notorious for extorting locals and mainly carries out small-scale, sporadic attacks, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Somalia typically issues the death penalty for crimes connected to terrorism.<\/p>\n The practice has been condemned by several local and international human rights groups, including The Coalition of Somali Human Rights Defenders.<\/p>\n