While some charge that viewing such pictures is voyeuristic, these images made me face the terror, the blood and the sheer cruelty of this practice - one that, astonishingly, has not yet been tossed into the dustbin of history. But I never understood just what it entails - the slow, cruel process by which a defenseless human being is degraded and destroyed - until I saw a series of photographs taken by Somali photojournalist Farah Abdi Warsameh, which depict the stoning execution of a man accused of adultery by the insurgent group Hizbul Islam. I know that stoning people to death is barbaric.
