Kenya mob kills 11 accused of being witches
Pastor Dale Morgan
Kenya mob kills 11 accused of being witches*
By TOM ODULA
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 21, 2008; 3:29 PM
NAIROBI, Kenya -- A group of up to 300 young men killed 11 people who
were accused of being witches and wizards in western Kenya, in some
cases slitting their throats or clubbing them to death before burning
their bodies, officials said.
The gang moved home to home through two villages, using a list of
suspected witches and wizards and the kind of spells they were believed
to have cast on the community, said Ben Makori, a local councilor.
"The villagers are complaining that the (suspected) wizards and witches
are making the bright children in the community dumb ... These
(suspected) witches are not doing good things to us," Makori told The
Associated Press.
Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said that the gang hunted down the
eight women and three men in the western Kenya villages of Kekoro and
Matembe. Most of the victims were over the age of 70, Owino said.
Senior administrator Njoroge Ndirangu said that the gang hunted down
their victims Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Some of the Murders may have actually been Vendetta Killings and the
settling of old scores and disputes and not related to witchcraft.
A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to talk to the media, said that investigators had little hope
of making progress because the villagers had refused to identify the
people who carried out attacks.
In some cases the gang pulled the victims out of their homes, slit their
throats or clubbed them to death, the officer said. The victims were
then thrown back into the homes that the gang already had set on fire,
the officer said. He said that 36 houses were burned.
Another police officer, Mwaura Njoroge, said "it is likely that the
people who committed these killings had personal vendettas against their
victims."
The violence was not believed to stem from a tribal dispute since the
young men and the victims were members of the same tribe.
Ndirangu, the commissioner in charge of Kisii Central district where one
of the villages is located, said that residents are superstitious and
have often targeted suspected witches and wizards. But this week's
attack was the most shocking in recent years, Ndirangu said.