Mozambique: Old man accused of sorcery murdered by own children – Watch

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Mozambique: Old man accused of sorcery murdered by own children – Watch

7:24 CAT | 01 Oct 2019

Photo: Miramar

A court in the southern Mozambican city of Maxixe is charging 20 people, all members of the same family, of first degree murder in the case of a 75 year old man who was killed last Saturday by his own children because they believed he was practising witchcraft.

According to a report of this grisly crime, carried by the independent television station STV, the elderly man was forced to dig his own grave, and then was buried alive.

The 20 suspects surrendered voluntarily to the Maxixe police, and confessed to what they had done. The court has decided to keep nine of them in preventive detention, while the other 11 await trial in freedom. Those regarded as the ringleaders are a son and a nephew of the murdered man (who has not yet been named).

When arrested, the 20 showed no signs of remorse – they justified the murder with the claim that the victim had been practising sorcery against them for the past 20 years.

One of them said “we all killed our father because we were tired of what he was doing. We, our children and our grandchildren are dying. We killed him to end this”.

From 2000 onwards, they said, ten members of the family had died, including children of the murdered man. They had consulted a witch-doctor who blamed the old man for all these deaths.

They also said that when members of the family went to South Africa looking for work, the South African police arrested them for crimes they had not committed. This too they blamed on their victim.

The spokesperson for the Inhambane Provincial Police Command, Juma Dauto, said this was not the first time members of the family had tried to murder the old man. Three years ago they tied him up and threw him in a river, but he managed to escape.

Juma said the police are now looking for the witch-doctor who claimed the old man was a sorcerer.