It was the evening after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on 20 July when Hambal M Zain began to run a fever. The 61-year-old coffee shop owner, who lives in the city of Banda Aceh in the north-western Aceh Province, thought little of it at the time and in the days that followed the fever subsided and Zain went back to work as usual.About a week later however, the fever suddenly returned and Zain developed a crushing headache.

The masked woman nervously approaches her target, shuffles into position and then unleashes a flurry of lashes - proving herself as the newest member of the first female flogging squad in Indonesia's Aceh province.The new recruit initially needed some coaxing to punish the offender - an unmarried woman caught in a hotel room with a man.Such behaviour constitutes a morality crime in Aceh, the only region in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation that imposes Islamic law - known a