KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.


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Benin alert over 'penis theft' panic



The authorities in Benin have ordered security forces to curb violence in the commercial capital, Cotonou, following the deaths of five people by vigilantes
There have been reports of at least 10 such attacks since Saturday.

Four of those who died were burned, another man was hacked to death.

Correspondents say that mobs have attacked indivduals accused of using magic to steal men's penises.

The belief that men's private parts can mysteriously disappear through a handshake or an incantation is commonplace in Benin where superstition and illiteracy are rife.

The BBC's Karim Okanla in Cotonou says these attacks begin by someone screaming that that they have been robbed of their penis.

An angry mob would then descend on any passer-by deemed to look suspicious, strip them naked and then douse them in petrol before setting them alight.

No one in the crowd would stop to question their actions or ask whether the accused might possess magical powers, he says.

Our correspondent adds that there have been some lucky escapes for people.

An angry mob almost necklaced a photojournalist who happened to be passing by whilst a crowd was hunting for a suspect.

Another example, he says, was when a high school principal narrowly escaped death, after a mob objected to him sheltering a man they had been chasing in his school.

One report said three of the people torched were foreigners.



2001 source

This is TOO much.



Kn*x plans flight to Congo to sue over lost wood.
Donkey can now explain why he lost his balls when challenged by CXXX.

Who else has a claim to file?

Is it any wonder none of these fucking economies can make a go of it? They give savages a bad name.