Long prison sentences for albino killers – Heinous crimes

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Long prison sentences for albino killers – Heinous crimes

8:17 CAT | 16 May 2016

The Cabo Delgado Provincial Court, sitting in the northern Mozambican city of Pemba, on Wednesday sentenced two people to prison terms of 35 years for the murder of an albino citizen in Balama district last November.

According to a Thursday report in the independent daily “O Pais”, the court found that the two men, Gomes Bernardo (21) and Rafael Urbano dos Santos (28) murdered an albino child, 15 year old Assane Saide, on 11 November.

They enticed the boy with cakes and then took him near the Merlica Primary School where they suffocated him, and then mutilated his dead body. They severed his arms and legs from his torso, shaved his hair and cut off his genitals. They dumped the rest of the body in a ditch at the school.

In court, the two accused confessed to the murder. They said they had killed the albino boy on the instructions of a man they named only as Jata, who has now disappeared.

There is a grisly trade in albino body parts, which are used in black magic rituals. Albinos are being kidnapped and murdered for their body parts, because of the superstitious belief that they possess magical powers, and can make those who take part in the rituals wealthy. This macabre practice seems to have been imported into northern Mozambique from neighbouring Tanzania, where albinos’ lives have been at risk for many years.

In passing sentence, the judge, Geraldo Patricio declared that Bernardo and dos Santos had shown “contempt for the human person and for life”.

Normally, the maximum prison term for murder is 24 years. Exceptional circumstances can lead to longer sentences, and the new penal code passed in 2014 created a category of “heinous crimes” for which much tougher sentences can be imposed.

Source: AIM