An official of the hardline Somalian al-Shabab rebel group has said that the two French security advisers who were kidnapped in Somalia are to be tried under strict Islamic Sharia law. They are accused of espionage, conspiracy against Islam and assisting government spies,  "the enemies of Allah".

The two agents, in Somalia to train the forces of the transitional government,  were snatched at gunpoint from their hotel in central Mogadishu last Tuesday. On Friday, Somalia's Social Affairs Minister Mohammed Ali Ibrahim confirmed the Frenchmen were being held by al-Shabab.

Foreigners - especially journalists and aid workers - are regularly kidnapped in Somalia, which has been enveloped in civil war since 1991. Also this week, three foreign aid workers were reported abducted overnight in a Kenyan town close to the Somali border by armed men who took them into Somalia.

Mogadishu photo by Abdurrahman Warsameh, ISN Security Watch (flickr)