Malawians arrested in possession of human bones

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Malawians arrested in possession of human bones

8:51 CAT | 26 Nov 2018

In file CoM

Two Malawian citizens are incarcerated in police cells in the western Mozambican city of Tete, accused of the illegal possession of human bones.

The spokesperson for the Tete provincial police command, Lurdes Ferreira, confirmed the detention of the Malawians. She said they had been surprised in a house that they were renting for the practice of magical rituals.

They were passing themselves off as members of the Mozambican Association of Traditional Healers (AMETRAMO).

“They are under police custody for the due investigations, because it is a crime to carry human bones in

Mozambique”, said Ferreira. “They were found with human skulls and leg bones. They said they were healers and they were treating people who wanted to become rich quick”. (She was referring to a superstitious belief that the use of human bones in certain rituals can confer wealth or power).

“We are looking for people who desecrate graves in cemeteries to exhume human bodies”, she said. “So when we find people carrying skulls, we suspect they are part of this group. So we are opening a case file to investigate the circumstances under which these human bones appeared in their possession”.

The Malawians have confirmed that the bones are indeed human, and admitted that they found them in cemeteries. They claimed that they had gone to the cemeteries looking for medicinal plants.

“We went there seeking medicinal plants”, they said. “We saw bones of people there too, and we took them for treatment, because they are part of the medicines used so that people become rich in a short space of time”.

The Tete provincial chairperson of AMETRAMO, Vasco Simbadzaco, told reporters that he had personally surprised the Malawians treating people in a house in the Mateus Sansão Mutemba neighbourhood.

“I caught them red-handed with the human bones”, he said. “I did my own investigations which proved they were the bones of people. When I asked them, they confirmed it and so I called the police to arrest them. We are being accused of desecrating graves, when the truth is that it’s these foreigners who cause us problems”.

Source: AIM