Kismayo, Somalia November 14, 2006 – Islamic religious police on Tuesday arrested 22 people for smoking in the Somali port of Kismayo, where they will be flogged if found guilty of violating a new tobacco ban, officials said.

Those detained were nabbed just days after local Islamist officials announced a total ban on the use of tobacco in the key southern port, in a new sign of their increasingly strict application of Sharia law.

"We started raids against tobacco users and we have arrested 22 people so far," Kismayo police deputy chief Mohmaed Abdulkadir Jibril told reporters here, about 500km south of the capital Mogadishu.

"Some of them were smoking cigarettes while others were using tobacco leaves when they were caught," he said.

The anti-smoking raids are the latest indication that Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, which is now girding for war with the weak government, is intent on imposing a fundamentalist version of Koranic law in its territory.

The Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June and now control most of southern and central Somalia, have enacted Sharia in varying degrees but have banned live music and shuttered cinema halls and photo shops in most areas.

Elements of the movement are accused of links with al-Qaeda and their rise has fuelled fears of a takeover similar to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.

The Islamists deny those charges.

Public reaction to the tobacco and khat ban was mixed in Kismayo, a freewheeling port town that the Islamists seized in late September from a government-allied militia.

"It is the start of clean days in Kismayo because our children will have brighter future, free from drugs and other bad hobbies that threaten their lives," said businessman Haji Mohamed Mao.

But others denounced the move as a violation of their freedom of choice.

"I have been smoking for 18 years and no government has ever interfered with my cigarettes," said Abdillahi Ali Jumaa, a 37-year-old smoker who has yet to run afoul of the religious police.

"I think this move is derailing democracy in the region."

Source: Sapa-AFP