The terrorists on Sunday “placed the woman in a hole in the middle of the courtyard of a military building and stoned her to death in the presence of dozens of residents” of Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, one witness said.
A local journalist at the scene confirmed the rare stoning, saying that the gunmen prevented photography of the execution.
“This was the first time we have seen such a thing,” another witness said.
A copy of the purported verdict issued by the so-called Hadramawt court of Al-Qaeda’s Ansar al-Sharia in December said the married woman had “confessed in front of the judges to committing adultery.”
The verdict said the woman also admitted “without any coercion that she practiced prostitution, as a pimp ... and that she worked with a group of women in brothels.”
She also confessed to smoking hashish, it added.
The verdict said that the woman was sentenced to be stoned to death for “committing adultery as a married woman ... and eighty lashes for consuming hashish.”
Stonings are commonly reported in areas controlled by the ISIS terrorist group in Syria and Iraq. ISIS militants have become infamous for imposing such punishments, as well as throwing alleged homosexuals from the roofs of buildings.
Cases of stoning also take place in areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.
In Yemen, Al-Qaeda militants have carried out summary executions, especially of people accused of sorcery, and chopped off the hands of those accused of theft.
They have also destroyed ancient Sufi mausoleums in Mukalla, as they consider tombs to be a form of idolatry.
On Friday, Al-Qaeda militants killed a woman in the southern port city of Aden after accusing her of practicing sorcery, a security source said.
Last week, Al-Qaeda gunmen lashed 10 men in Aden for consuming alcohol and hashish, witnesses said.
Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch is considered by the United States to be the most dangerous affiliate of the global extremist network.
It has taken advantage of the Yemeni state’s weakness to expand its control in several areas, including the vast Hadramawt region.
In Aden, which has been declared by the government as the impoverished African Peninsula nation’s temporary capital, a struggle for influence between Al-Qaeda and ISIS has been causing growing unrest.
S/SH