Mali Islamists Cut Off Thief's Hand

The Islamist group Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) two days ago cut off a thief's hand.

Ten days earlier Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), an armed Islamist group occupying the north of the country of Mali and trying to expand to its south, publicly stoned an unmarried couple to death.

Both groups have links to Al-Qaeda.

An armed Islamist group occupying northern Mali said Thursday it hopes to win over the country's south to its ideology and create an Islamic state.

Ansar Dine is one of the groups holding key northern cities in a four-month occupation which has effectively split the west African nation in two.

"We hope to be able to peacefully convince the people of this country (southern Mali) to join us so that all our efforts can be directed against the common enemy," Ansar Dine spokesman Senda Ould Boumama told an Islamist website called "Defenders of Jihadists".

The "common enemy" was described as non-Muslim "miscreants".

Enforcing Islamic law, sharia, is a way to impose Ansar Dine's authority in the region, hence the maiming and stoning.