This picture is running on the front page of the Times in South Africa today. It shows a 48 year old man, Mohamed Abukar Ibrahim, being buried to his waist by members of a paramilitary group, who then stoned him to death. He'd been convicted of committing adultery.

I'll spare you the other shots from this series, but they clearly show Ibrahim's fellow villagers gathered around. They had, it was said, been forced to watch his execution. It was a reminder that Shariah law must be obeyed.

While the picture is certainly shocking, the story itself is nothing new. Since the emergence of the militant "Al Shabaab" group, public executions have become common in Somalia. Shabaab are, as the Americans never tire of reminding us, "an Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda" - although quite what those links are is unclear.

What's different this time is that it was caught on camera. it's one thing to read about a stoning, but quite another to look into the eyes of the victim moments before his death.
AP deserve credit for obtaining these pictures which will, hopefully, focus more attention towards the plight of a country most people seem to have written off.

Just as troubling as the images themselves, though, is the detail, buried in the copy, that the masked fighters who are preparing the man for his death don't belong to Al Shabaab. They're part of a rival group, Hisb-Al Islam.
I found that fact to be profoundly depressing, and here's why:

I filed a story last month about the spread of militant Islam in Somalia.
We spent a week in the country filming with people who've been displaced by the ubiquitous violence, and then a week in Kenya speaking to Somali exiles, some of whom had been involved with Al Shabaab.
Many of our contacts spoke optimistically about a group of brave men fighting under the banner Hisb-Al Islam. They were not prepared to tolerate Shabaab's ultra-militant rule any more and had raised arms against them.
This was the future for Somalia, we were told. The group were on the verge of reclaiming Kismayo, one of the major cities, and their support was spreading with every victory.
It wasn't just street-talk, seasoned Somalia analysts, while more cautious, confirmed that Hisb-Al Islam provides at least a cause for some optimism.

Well, these pictures obliterate all that rather effectively. Mohammed Abukar Ibrahim's horrific death confirms what many must have suspected. That, given a whiff of power, Hisb-Al Islam would hammer home their authority using the Quran as a shield.

At least this time there are pictures. A tiny snapshot from a country left to fester for almost 20 years.
It's unpleasant subject matter for the breakfast table, but people need to be shocked by pictures like this.
Somalia has been written off by the outside world and if these images go even some way towards pricking the conscience of one of the many Governments who've let it's people down, then perhaps poor Ibrahim's death won't be completely in vain.