A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police have said.

Her death adds to a growing list of men and women who have been accused of sorcery and then tortured or killed in the South Pacific island nation, where traditional beliefs hold sway in many regions.

The victims are often scapegoats for someone else's unexplained death and bands of tribesmen collude to mete out justice to them for their supposed magical powers, police said.

Early Tuesday morning, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire.

The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.

In recent years, as AIDS has taken a toll in the the nation, villagers have blamed suspected witches -- and not the virus -- for the deaths.

Authorities in Papua New Guinea are being urged to take greater action to prevent further killings related to allegations of sorcery.

A father and son became the latest victims on 8th February. Local men in Ban village shot dead 60-year-old Plak Mel Doa and threw his body into a fire. His son, Anis Dua, was dragged from his home and burnt alive. Local people had accused them both of causing the death of a prominent member of the community by sorcery.

There has been an increase in reports of sorcery-related killings over the last year. According to the media there were over 50 such deaths in 2008.This is either because of an actual increase in such incidents or that more incidents are now being reported.

Reports have continued into this year. A village court comprising church pastors and local officials found a 40-year-old man from a village in Unggai-Bena district in the Eastern Highland province guilty of sorcery and sentenced him to death on 30 January. A group of local men then hacked him to death with bush knives.

When dozens of people have been killed after literal witch hunts, it's clear that the government is not doing enough to protect its own citizens and maintain the rule of law, said Apolosi Bose, Amnesty International's Pacific Islands researcher: The police and judicial authorities have to step in immediately before another person faces this kind of vigilante violence.

People often don't trust the police or the judiciary and instead blame events on supernatural causes and punish suspected sorcerers, Apolosi Bose said: The Constabulary, the Public Prosecution Office and other relevant authorities should step up efforts to curb vigilante violence and raise awareness in communities about ways in which people can legitimately seek justice.

About 1,000 people have been rounded up and forced to drink hallucinogens as part of a witch-hunting campaign in Gambia.

The authorities began inviting witch doctors from nearby Guinea after the death this year of an aunt of Gambia's president, Yahya Jammeh. Jammeh is said to believe witchcraft was involved in her death.

Since then, the witch doctors – accompanied by police, soldiers, intelligence agents and the president's personal guards – have forcibly taken about 1,000 alleged witches from their villages and spirited them to secret locations, according to Amnesty International. It said about 300 of them had been taken to Jammeh's personal farm.

The rights group said victims were forced to drink unknown substances that cause them to hallucinate and behave erratically. Many are then forced to confess to being a witch. In some cases, they are severely beaten, almost to the point of death.

Amnesty has called on the government of Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup and has claimed he can cure Aids, to halt the campaign and bring those responsible to justice

Nearly all the residents of Koge in Papua New Guninea watched as Julianna Gene and Kopaku Konia were dragged from their homes, to be hung from trees and tortured for several hours with bush knives. No one came forward to help. In the eyes of the villagers, the women were witches. They deserved to die. The finger of suspicion fell on the women after a local man died in a car accident.

A shocking increase in witch-hunt deaths in Papua New Guinea has prompted the government to launch a parliamentary commission of inquiry with a view to toughening the law. Joe Mek Teine, the chairman of the nation's law reform commission, has publicly declared that sorcery killings are getting out of hand.

Most witch hunts happen in the Highlands, the remote mountainous interior wracked by centuries of tribal wars and blood feuds. Contact with the outside world was only established in the 1930s, when some of the many ethnic groups were still living stone-age existences. Although there are no official statistics on sorcery killings, more than 50 were reported to the police in just two Highland provinces last year.

Belief in black magic is so ingrained that the government legally recognises sorcery, under the 1976 Sorcery Act. It permits white magic (healing or fertility rites for example) but the so-called black arts are punishable by up to two years in jail. This has resulted in murderers alleging the use of black magic as provocation and securing reduced sentences.

Branding someone a witch is a crime, but Detective Blacky Koglame estimates that fewer than 1 per cent of cases end up in court. Even when witnesses do come forward, he admits the police simply do not have the resources to investigate: And anyway, arresting people is very hard. Everyone in the community is usually involved, so you can't just go in looking for suspects, as you'd have to arrest the whole village, and that's impossible.

In one area deep in the Highlands a team of eight witch hunters claim to have tortured and killed 18 people between them. The leader of the group, a man with a reputation as a violent local gangster said: It is part of my culture, my tradition, it's my belief. I see myself as a guardian angel. We feel that we kill on good grounds and we're working for the good of the people in the village.

Witch hunts nearly always occur after a death or an illness of a community member. Natural causes for death or illness are just not accepted, said Pastor Jack Urame, a researcher at the Melanesian Institute and one of the country's leading experts on sorcery killings: So whenever someone dies in a village, a person must blamed.

Saudi Arabia’s morality police are launching a programme to combat witchcraft and sorcery, the official SPA news agency reported.

The religious police, also known as the muttawa, will create teams specially trained to eradicate the practices, deputy commission president Ibrahim al-Hoiml said.

The plan is aimed at developing people to work in the field on cases of witchcraft and sorcery to protect the society and raise public awareness, he said.

Saudi clerics are supposedly concerned about the operations of self-described fortune-tellers, mystics, magicians and others. Supposedly they often pitch their services to women seeking to put spells on men or to have children, and to people suffering from diseases. Some are especially popular with immigrant workers from Africa.

Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy's care.

I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear, said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett: One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. ... Nigerian witches are terrified of brooms. From that day two years ago, Christian, now 14, was branded a witch. The abuse intensified.

The teen is one of the so-called witch children in Eket, a city in oil-rich Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria. They are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to "cleanse" them of their supposed magical powers.

Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession, said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.

Many of those targeted have traits that make them stand out, including learning disabilities, stubbornness and ailments such as epilepsy, he added. The states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he said.

...Read full article

Citizens of the tiny West African nation of Gambia have grown familiar with the unpredictable exploits of its absolute ruler, His Excellency President Professor Dr Al-Haji Yahya Jammeh

The president, it seems, had bec ome concerned about witches, so, to the accompaniment of drums, and directed by men in red tunics bedecked with mirrors and cowrie shells, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Gambians were taken from their villages and driven to secret locations. There they were forced to drink a foul-smelling concoction that made them hallucinate and in some cases killed them.

Amnesty International estimates that at least six people died after being forced to drink the potion.

The objective was to root out evil sorcerers who were harming the country, the villagers were told. Terrified, dozens fled into the bush or across the border into Senegal to escape the dragnet leaving whole regions deserted.

The round-ups occurred from late January until March, but even in recent weeks, the same witch doctors in red, accompanied by others identified as government agents, have circulated in the dirt-poor countryside – demanding that villagers make animal sacrifices, of a red he-goat and a red rooster, to root out the sorcery in their midst.

Child Witches in Congo

Thanks to Alan
Based on article from abcnews.go.com

The fate of children accused of witchcraft in the Congo is often nothing short of horrific.

ABC News' Nightline gained exclusive access to four churches, where we saw scores of children -- including toddlers -- who were denounced as witches. The accusers were powerful and often politically connected pastors, who some say get paid to perform so-called deliverance ceremonies, or exorcisms, which can be unimaginably brutal.

Arnold Mushiete, a social worker for Our House, a small, Catholic organization funded entirely by donations, which helps children accused of witchcraft, was our guide into this frightening world. He said a new breed of Christian pastors are manipulating the faith: Our work is to repair what they have destroyed and to give another image of Jesus, not one who tortures children.

Accusing children of witchcraft is a relatively new phenomenon in the Congo. Experts say it's the result of a toxic combination of causes, including decades of war, an economy in collapse, and a new breed of Christian pastors who profit by telling impoverished parents that all of their problems -- economic, medical and emotional -- are caused by the family's weakest members.

Unwanted children are often accused of witchcraft as a pretense for abandoning them. Save the Children estimates 70 percent of the estimated 15,000 street children in the capital city of Kinshasa have been accused of witchcraft.
Why would a parent ever believe their child is a witch? Mushiete says in a culture where death and divorce have destroyed families, parents are easy prey for greedy, ruthless pastors.

Villagers, many straight from their farms, and armed with machetes, sticks and axes, are shouting and crowding round in a big group in Kenya's fertile Kisii district.

Suddenly an old woman breaks from the crowd, screaming for mercy. Three or four people go after her, beat her and drag her back, pushing her onto - what I can now see - is a raging fire.

I was witnessing a horrific practice which appears to be on the increase in Kenya - the lynching of people accused of being witches.

...Read full article

Indoenesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is facing, yet another 'adversary', apart from a challenge by a vice-president and a former president in the run-up to the presidential elections on July 8.

He claims that black magic is being dabbled by his enemies to derail his efforts for a second term: This is an election season. Many are practising black magic. Indeed, my family and I can sense its effects. It's extraordinary. Many methods (of black magic) are being used, he told 3,000 participants of a prayer gathering at his private residence.

He said he chanted prayers as a means to protect himself against black magic attacks from his challengers.

I have come to the conclusion that only prayers can defeat black magic attacks. For instance, last night (Friday night), I kept praying all the way to the venue of the debate (the third and final round of presidential debates), along with my wife, aides and driver," he was quoted by Antara news agency.

A witchcraft practicing woman and unknown villagers had burnt down a home of a man who has embraced Christianity in a Central Indian state as the cast spells have no more effect on the new believer.

Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported that the house of Raj Bahor family was burnt down because the casts spell by their neighbour lady who practices sorcery and witchcraft became ineffective on him ever since he became a Christian.

Raj Bahor who lives with his wife and four children in Lor, started attending a Church. Then the 'witch' became furious with Raj because her magic power can have no more affect on the family, the report said.

This lady and some unknown persons burned down Raj's family house made of wood and thatch on 2 August, the report stated.

Since Raj also suspects a man called Bhadri Prasad Kushwaha he went to the police station along with his pastor Heeralal Kushwaha and made a complaint with the Superintendent of Police, however, no action has been taken, the report said.

When James Katana returned from a church service to his village in the Bugiri district of eastern Uganda he was told that his three-year old son had been taken away by strangers.

We were looking for my child for hours, but we couldn't find him. Someone rang me and told me my son was dead and had been left in the forest. I ran there and saw him lying in a pool of blood. His genitals had been cut off, but he was still alive.

A witch-doctor is now in police custody, accused of the abduction and attempted murder of the boy.

Despite the mutilation and terror the child experienced, police say he was one of the lucky ones. Uganda has been shocked by a surge in ritualistic murders and human sacrifice, with police struggling to respond and public hysteria mounting at each gruesome discovery.

In 2008 more than 300 cases of murder and disappearances linked to ritual ceremonies were reported to the police with 18 cases making it to the courts. There were also several high-profile arrests of parents and relatives accused of selling children for human sacrifice.

In January this year the Ugandan government appointed a special police taskforce on human sacrifice and announced that 2,000 officers were to receive specialist training in tackling child trafficking with the support of the US government. Since the taskforce was set up there have been 15 more murders linked to human sacrifice with another 200 disappearances, mainly of children and young adults, under investigation.

This year we have had more occurrences of people attempting to sell their children to witch-doctors as part of ritual ceremonies to guarantee wealth and prosperity, said Moses Binoga, acting commissioner of the anti-human sacrifice and trafficking taskforce.
Both police and NGOs are attributing the surge to a new wave of commercial witch-doctors using mass media to market their services and demand large sums of money to sacrifice humans and animals for people who believe blood will bring great prosperity.

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children's Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

...Read the full article

Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India's Jharkhand state.

Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric.

The victims were taken to a playground where hundreds had assembled to watch the ghastly incident, deputy inspector general of police Murari Lal Meena told the BBC. No one in the mob came forward to rescue the victims as they were being stripped and beaten up, he said.

Police went to Pattharghatia village after being informed about the incident by a group of villagers. They have lodged a case against 11 villagers, including six women. Four people have been arrested in connection with the incident. The victims are now under police protection.

Police say that people in Pattharghatia believe that certain women in their village are possessed by a holy spirit that can identify those who practise witchcraft. These women recently identified five women from the same village as being witches who practised witchcraft and brought miseries to the area, a police official said. Soon, an unruly mob broke into their huts, dragged them out and started beating them up.

Footage of the incident has been aired on television channels in India prompting outrage.

Hundreds of people, mostly women, have been killed in India because their neighbours thought they were witches. Experts say superstitious beliefs are behind some of these attacks, but there are occasions when people - especially widows - are targeted for their land and property.

Update: Witch Murder

28th October 2009. See article from sify.com

A village headwoman in Chattisgarh had been arrested with her daughter and son-in-law for allegedly stoning to death a woman who was branded a witch.

The village sarpanch, Rimni Bai, and her daughter and son-in-law were arrested following strong evidence that they stoned to death a middle-aged tribal woman Budhiaro Bai after branding her a witch, said a police official probing the case.

A Lebanese man of 47 was sentenced to death by a court in Medina, in Saudi Arabia, for having practiced black magic, reported the paper Saudi Gazette.

The man, who had already appeared on satellite television, was caught in a Medina hotel room while using herbs and talismans for one of his magic rituals.

During the two years of persecuting the man, who is also accused of fraud, he admitted to having practiced black magic rituals and having contributed to the ending of marriages.

To be definitive, the court sentence must obtain the approval of the Magistrates' Court.

A man has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft because he makes predictions on television.

Ali Sibat is not even a Saudi national. The Lebanese citizen was only visiting Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage when he was arrested in Medina last year.

A court in the city condemned him as a witch on November 9.

The only evidence presented in court was reportedly the claim he appeared regularly on Lebanese satellite issuing general advice on life and making predictions about the future.

The case is causing outrage among human rights campaigners but has made little news elsewhere despite the ludicrous nature of the charges and the extraordinary severity of Sibat's sentence.

Saudi courts are sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch: The crime of witchcraft is being used against all sorts of behavior, with the cruel threat of state sanctioned executions.

Ali Sibat's supporters say he was denied a lawyer at his trial and was tricked into making a confession.

Helen Ukpabio, the demented leader of Nigeria's Liberty Gospel Church, has brought a lawsuit against humanist Leo Igwe and a number of other parties opposed to her campaign against witches, claiming two hundred billion Naira ($800,000 dollars) in damages.

An email we have just received from Igwe reveals that Ukpabio is claiming that her church's rights rights to practice their Christian religious belief relating to witchcraft had been infringed.

Also named in the law suit is the Goverment of Akwa Ibom state, the Inspector General of Police, the Commissioner of Police of Cross River State, Sam Ituama, Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network, and Gary Foxcroft of Stepping Stones Nigeria.

The case is due to be heard on December 17.

Ukpabio applied to the Federal High Court in Calabar for the enforcement of her fundamental rights. She claimed, among other things, that the conference on Witchcraft and Child Rights, held on July 29 in Calabar – disrupted by her members – and the arrest of church members at the event, constituted an infringement on her rights.

She asked the court to issue perpetual permanent restraining Igwe and others from interfering with their practice of Christianity and their deliverance of people with witchcraft; from holding seminars or workshops denouncing the Christian religious belief in witchcraft; and from arresting her and her church members.

Leo Igwe said:

Helen Ukpabio should be ready to face justice and answer for her crimes. She should be ready to pay damages to thousands of children who have been tortured, traumatised, abused and abandoned as a result of her misguided ministry. Helen should be ready to pay for the damage she has done to many homes and households across Nigeria through her witchcraft schemes and other fraudulent activities. She should be ready to pay compensation to all care givers and child rights advocates who have been attacked, harrassed and robbed by her gangs and goons.

A recent documentary, Return to Africa’s Witch Children, reveal some of these atrocities.

So, whatever the mischief this vicious woman and her rag-tag ministry are planning, I am convinced that at the end of the day, reason, justice and human rights will prevail.

Update: Law Suit Abandoned

6th February 2010.  See article from freethinker.co.uk

We have just been informed by Leo Igwe, Executive Director of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, that the lunatic head of the Liberty Gospel Church, Helen Ukpabio, failed for the second time to appear in the Federal High Court in Calabar to press a lawsuit she initiated against him and a number of others – and the case was struck out.

The nonsensical belief that children can be possessed by evil supernatural forces is increasingly being spread in the UK by evangelical preachers with African backgrounds.

The problem was highlighted a year ago by a Channel 4 Dispatches team – and this week we were reminded of the devastating effects of child witchcraft belief when an evangelist church leader was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for torturing his 10-year-old daughter.

The man, who came to the UK from the Congo, kept the girl prisoner for four days with no food because he was convinced she was a witch.

According to this report, the twisted 39-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, dripped boiling hot plastic over his terrified daughter's feet and beat her senseless after she became possessed by evil spirits.

The girl was held prisoner and force-fed olive oil and milk for four days after her father became convinced she had powers to make people fall asleep, Coventry Crown Court heard. Interviewed by Dispatches, this woman said church leaders are such strong people in our community

The preacher admitted child cruelty. His second wife, the girl's step-mother, admitted wilful neglect of a child and was jailed for four years.

Sentencing the man, Judge Peter Ross told him:

Your daughter, in the last three to four weeks that she lived with you, was subjected to the most horrific torture. She did not even have a bed to sleep on. You bound her, you gagged her, you beat her, you whipped her and then kept her prisoner with no food.

It is hard to imagine any man, let alone a father, quite deliberately inflicting such calculated cruelty on a child. It is your beliefs which led you to believe she was possessed by evil spirits. These beliefs are frankly something an intelligent man would know were nonsense.

According to the Metropolitan Police there have been almost 60 cases of child abuse related to witchcraft or possession reported to Scotland Yard between 2006 and 2008.

The European Union has voiced concern over reports of death sentences in Saudi Arabia on charges relating to sorcery.

The alleged activities cannot be punishable by law, since they would simply correspond to individuals exercising their freedom of opinion and expression, the Swedish Presidency of the EU said in a statement.

According to the London-based Amnesty International, two men are sitting in death row in Saudi Arabia on charges relating to sorcery.

One man, Lebanese national, Ali Hussain Sibat, travelled to Saudi Arabia to perform a Muslim pilgrimage, and was arrested by Saudi religious police in his hotel room in Medina in May 2008.

He was sentenced to death on 9 November 2009, after what Amnesty International described as secret court hearings where he had no legal representation. Sibat was a presenter on a television show on a Lebanese satellite station, where he gave advice and predictions about the future.

The other man facing execution was sentenced to death for apostasy on grounds relating to sorcery by a court in the city of Hail.

According to Amnesty International, Saudi authorities have arrested scores of people for "sorcery" this year.

The EU and Amnesty International called on Saudi Arabia to rescind the death sentences.

Muslim clerics in Malaysia want laws to ban witchcraft to 'help' stem a tide of robberies, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.

Witchcraft is forbidden in Islam, but there are currently no civil, or Islamic sharia laws, that clearly prohibit it.

Reports of the use of so-called black magic are widespread in in this majority Muslim country, with robbers said to use spells to ensure a successful heist.

Criminals were said to have tapped a victim's back or blow cigarette smoke on a victim's face to cast spells, making them unaware they are being robbed, 'respected' Muslim scholar Haron Din was quoted as saying. Haron claimed one way to catch black magic practitioners was to find evidence of animal skulls, rosary beads, incense and old daggers that he said were used in performing witchcraft.

Influential cleric Mohamed Tamyes Abdul Wahid said laws on black magic should be applied to Muslims as well as the sizable Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities in the country.

The punishment for black magic under Muslim laws could include whipping and banishment from the district where the offender resided, the nutters said.

Amnesty International has called on the King of Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a Lebanese national, whose death sentence for charges relating to sorcery was upheld by a court last week.

If the higher courts reject his appeal, Ali Hussain Sibat, a former television presenter for a Lebanese satellite TV station, who gave advice and predictions about the future, could be executed at any time.

Another unidentified man sentenced to death for "apostasy" in July 2009 by a court in Hail on grounds relating to "sorcery" may also still be at risk of execution.

Ali Hussain Sibat was arrested by the Mutawa'een (religious police) on charges of "sorcery" in May 2008 while he was in Saudi Arabia to perform a form of Muslim pilgrimage, the umra.

His lawyer in Lebanon believes that 'Ali Hussain Sibat was arrested because members of the Mutawa'een had recognized him from the show, which was broadcast on the Sheherazade TV station.

He was sentenced to death by a court in Madina on 9 November 2009 after secret court hearings where he had no legal representation or assistance.

In January 2010, the Court of Appeal in Makkah accepted an appeal against 'Ali Hussain Sibat's death sentence, on grounds that it was a premature verdict. The Court of Appeal said that all allegations made against 'Ali Hussain Sibat had to be verified, and that if he had really committed the crime he should be asked to repent.

But on March 10, a court in Madina upheld the death sentence. The judges said that he deserved to be sentenced to death because he had practised "sorcery" publicly for several years before millions of viewers and that his actions "made him an infidel".

The court said also that there would be no way to verify that his repentance, if he should repent, would be sincere and that imposing the death sentence would deter other people from engaging in "sorcery" at a time when, the court said, there is an increase in the number of "foreign magicians" entering Saudi Arabia.

The case has been sent back to the Court of Appeal in Makkah for approval of the death sentence.

Lawyer May al-Khansa had learned from a Saudi judicial source that that the execution of TV astrologer Ali Sibat for witchcraft was imminent.

So a dozen people demonstrated near the Saudi embassy in Beirut's western district of Qureitim. Four of the men wore masks to look like executioners and carried a wooden gallows with a cloth bag hanging from it. One of the men carried a small banner that read in Arabic: Don't kill.

Ms Khansa said she had called upon Saudi King Abdullah to pardon Sibat. She added that Sibat did not make predictions in Saudi Arabia and was neither a Saudi citizen nor a resident in Saudi and therefore should have been deported rather than tried there.

Sibat made predictions on an Arab satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police during his pilgrimage to the holy city of Medina in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November.

Ali is not a criminal. He did not commit a crime or do anything disgraceful, Ms Khansa said. The world should help in rescuing a man who has five children, a wife and a seriously ill mother.

A Reprieve

Based on article from thescotsman.scotsman.com

The Lebanese man incredibly condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court was not beheaded yesterday as had been expected, his lawyer said.

May al-Khansa said her client, TV psychic Ali Sibat, had been spared, but it was not clear whether the beheading had been waived or only postponed.

A Humanist group in Malawi has said it will ask the country's president to release dozens of women jailed on allegations of practising witchcraft.

The Association of Secular Humanism wants President Bingu wa Mutharika to order the immediate release of 80 women, many of them elderly, sentenced to up to six years imprisonment with hard labour. Most of them were accused of teaching witchcraft to children.

Witchcraft is not currently a crime under Malawian law, however, the government has set up a committee to investigate criminalising the practice.

Saudi Arabia's high court has rejected the execution sentence of a Lebanese TV astrologer unbelievably convicted of sorcery and recommended that he be deported after a new trial.

The Supreme Court in Riyadh said that the death sentence for Ali Sabat was not warranted because he had not harmed anyone and had no prior offenses in the country.

The court said his case should be sent back to a lower court in Medina to be retried and recommended that Sabat, who has spent 30 months in a Saudi prison since his May 2008 arrest, be deported, Okaz said.

Sabat was sentenced to death last November by a Medina court as astrology was considered as practicing witchcraft, illegal under Saudi Arabia's Sharia law. He was arrested by the religious police in Medina, where he was on a pilgrimage.

The case against him was brought after he gave advice and made predictions on Lebanese television, broadcast to Saudi Arabia via satellite.

Armed police watched as a mob stoned to death a South African priest they believed had bewitched his young relative into committing suicide.

Albert Shai was killed after a relative, 20-year-old Mohale Shai, apparently committed suicide.

The young man had been found hanging from a tree on Christmas night and the community suspected he died because he was bewitched – and blamed it on the priest.

Two days later, Shai was tried and sentenced to death in a mob hearing held at the local soccer field.

Police arrived in two vans within minutes, but were instructed by the community not to interfere. The mob pelted the police with stones, and they kept their distance. While the police obeyed the order to stay away, Shai was being assaulted.

Police afterwards arrested seven people in connection with the murder.

Ghanaians are waiting for their normally slow court system to deliver a verdict in a shocking case that illuminates resurgent beliefs in witchcraft.

Six people are currently appearing before a magistrate at Tema, near Accra, for allegedly burning a 72-year-old woman to death, in the belief that she was a witch. Earlier, the media had made fun of an elderly woman who, it was claimed, was arrested by villagers who claimed that she had fallen out of the sky after running out of witches' gas on a flying expedition with her coven, and fallen under a tree.

In both cases, anyone with the slightest knowledge of dementia would recognise symptoms of the disease from the accounts given of the behaviour of the women. They were where they were not supposed to be, and when they were asked what they were doing there, they could not explain themselves. This is because dementia sometimes robs its victims of the ability to speak coherently.

...Read the full article

A young woman and her grandmother were stoned to death by a gang of teenagers in South Africa who accused them of being witches.

Cynthia Lemaho and her grandmother Mupala Motopela were dragged from their home by a gang of youngsters who pelted them with rocks until they died.

Police launched a murder investigation following the tragedy, which happened near the town of Tzaneen in South Africa's northern Limpopo province..

Spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi said it appeared many members of the local community believed the women had been witches:

For some people in a community it is hard to understand when others appear to be doing well in their lives. By all accounts this young woman was working hard and had managed to get somewhere for her family. It could be that petty jealousies led her neighbours to spread rumours about her which resulted in her being victimised. Sadly her grandmother was also murdered, purely by association with her.

Update: Arrests

31st March 2011. See article from sowetanlive.co.za

Swift action by the police after a tip-off has resulted in the arrest of 32 people accused of stoning to death two women in Bokgaga village outside Tzaneen on Human Rights Day.

Saudi Arabia has beheaded a Sudanese man by sword in the western city of Medina after he was convicted of practicing sorcery, the Interior Ministry announced.

Abdul Hamid al-Fakki practiced witchcraft and sorcery, which are illegal under Saudi Arabia's Islamic sharia law, claimed the ministry.

In October last year, Amnesty International said it had appealed to King Abdullah in a letter to commute Fakki's death sentence.

Military Judge Saqr Saqr charged eight members of a supposed devil worship group with blasphemy.

Their case has been referred to Military Investigative Judge Riad Abu Ghida who will interrogate them.

Despite it being a potential criminal offense, there is little known, though no shortage of rumors, about devil worship and Satanism in Lebanon. In 2003, more than 50 individuals were arrested on similar charges. Only a handful were ever convicted.

Ghana's government is looking at ways to support people accused of witchcraft, mainly women and children banished by their communities to witches' camps in the north.

Currently around 1,000 women and 700 children are living in six camps in northern Ghana, where they have found refuge from threats and violence from people in their home communities after being labelled witches and blamed for causing misfortune to others.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in Africa but in sub-Saharan Africa accusations against children are a recent and growing phenomena, according to a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) report released last year.

The government has said it was working with the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) to improve conditions in the camps by providing food and other support to the inmates, then in the long-term the government would look at repatriating the residents to their home villages and shutting down the camps. This will include educating communities back home so they understand the banished women are not actually witches.

Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. No official details have been provided about the woman's crime.

The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session. [If this were the case then surely fraud charges would have been more appropriate].

The paper said a female investigator followed up, and the woman was arrested in April, 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court.

A sister who tortured her teenage brother to death in a sadistic murder because her lover convinced her he was a witch was today jailed for a minimum of 25 years.

Kristy Bamu, 15, was beaten and tortured over four days by his sister Magalie Bamu and her boyfriend Eric Bikubi, leaving the boy with more than 130 injuries.

At the Old Bailey the pair were jailed for life with Bikubi, who was the main assailant, jailed for a minimum of 30 years.

The feral, wild and completely out of control pair believed in a twisted version of a Congolese religion and became convinced Kristy was possessed by an evil spirit and controlling another child in the family. He was attacked with a haul of everyday household items including weightlifting bar, clawhammer, tiles, pliers, and pieces of wood.

Eventually the weakened schoolboy begged to die and slipped under the water of a bath after he and his siblings were all placed in it to be hosed down in cold water by Bikubi on Christmas Day in 2010.

Judge David Paget QC said:

I am in no doubt this murder involved a sadistic element. The intention was to rid Kristy Bamu of witchcraft. To do that both defendants brutalised and physically abused him until eventually he died. It was prolonged torture.

A belief in witchcraft, however genuine, can never excuse an assault on another person or the killing of another human being.

I find it impossible not to conclude that there was an intention by you Eric Bikubi, to kill, perhaps not at first but certainly at the end of the ordeal inflicted on Kristy.

Update: Police comment on scale of faith based child abuse

6th March 2012. See article from telegraph.co.uk

Children in Britain are being abused and murdered in increasing numbers because the belief in witchcraft is rife in some African communities, police said.

The Metropolitan Police said it had investigated 83 faith-based child abuse cases involving witchcraft in the past 10 years but believed it was still an under-reported, hidden crime.

Children's charities and campaigners urged communities to report abuse and said social workers must be firmer in confronting abuse in immigrant groups.

A Sri Lankan woman is currently facing decapitation by sword on a witchcraft charge in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with Wahhabism, an extreme form of Sunni Islam.

A Saudi man complained that in a shopping mall his 13-year-old daughter suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, which happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman, reports the daily Okaz.

After the local man denounced the Sri Lankan for casting a spell on his daughter, police in the port city of Jeddah found it sufficient cause to arrest the woman.

Witchcraft and sorcery imply only one measure in Saudi Arabia, beheading. And it works this way in practice: last year in the kingdom at least two people, a woman in her 60s and a Sudanese man, were beheaded on witchcraft charges.