Jakarta: An Indonesian man, who worked for an organisation that helped draft strict adultery laws, has been publicly flogged after being caught having an affair with a married woman, a media report said on Friday.
Mukhlis bin Muhammad of the Aceh Ulema Council (MPU) was on Thursday flogged 28 times, while the woman he had the affair with was caned 23 times, the BBC reported.
Mukhlis is from the deeply conservative Aceh region, the only place in Indonesia which practises the strict Islamic Sharia law. Gay sex and gambling are also punishable by public caning in Aceh.
"This is God's law. Anyone must be flogged if proven guilty, even if he is a member of the MPU," Husaini Wahab, the deputy mayor of Aceh Besar district where Mukhlis lives, told BBC News.
Husaini added that Mukhlis would be expelled from the MPU. The 46-year-old is also an Islamic religious leader. He is the first religious leader to be publicly caned in Aceh since Sharia law came into force in 2005.
Aceh was granted special rights to introduce its own stricter Islamic laws more than a decade ago. In 2017, two men were caned 83 times each in Aceh after they were caught having a homosexual relation.
