Satanic Ritual murder suspects lynched
Pastor Dale Morgan
Satanic Ritual murder suspects lynched*
From correspondents in Gabon
April 14, 2007 07:10am
Article from: Reuters
GABON's government today appealed to the public not to take justice in
their own hands following the lynching of two men suspected of
sodomising a 3-year-old boy and draining his blood in a Satanic ritual
murder case.
The sadistic Satanic killing of the boy, Richepin Eyogo Edzang, has
shocked inhabitants of the oil-producing central African state.
It has also raised fears about an increase in ritual Satanic murders, a
practice still found in parts of West Africa in which people kill to
obtain bodies and body parts in the belief they will bring social
success and political power.
Eyogo Edzang was abducted from his parents' ground-floor flat in a
popular Libreville neighbourhood on Sunday. His corpse, which had burn
marks and from which the blood had been drained, was found later in the
day in a car parked outside.
"He had been sodomised ... and his killers appear to have burned him
with an electric iron because his body carried the marks," the police
report of the murder said.
Two men suspected of killing the infant, including a writer who lived in
a room above the boy's parents, were beaten to death this week by
enraged local neighbours, police said.
Facing popular revulsion over the boy's murder, Gabon's government
issued a statement today calling for restraint and urging the public to
let the police fully investigate the case, which it said reflected
"serious moral degradation".
The government condemned the lynching of the two untried suspects and
reminded "all citizens it is not for them to take the place of the law
and the courts by carrying out acts of revenge which could threaten
social peace and national unity".
Police said they believed the Satanic murder and mutilation of the
little boy was the latest of a series of suspected ritual Satanic
killing cases that had occurred this year.
In January, the amputated genitals of two men and two women were found
on a Libreville highway.
In the same month, the bodies of two children aged three and four were
found in the boot of a car abandoned on an empty site.