Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican police have arrested three people accused of kidnapping and murdering a woman in order to extract her genitals in the western province of Tete.
According to the spokesperson for the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC), Celina Roque, cited by the independent television station STV, the gruesome crime occurred on 27 August, in Domue locality, in Angonia district, near the border with Malawi,
The victim was intercepted in the street by a Burundian man who offered her money in exchange for sex. She agreed, and what appeared at first to be a consensual sexual relation turned into a tragedy, when the Burundian took his victim into the bush, where three accomplices, all of them Mozambicans, were waiting.
They simulated a robbery, by intercepting the motorcycle carrying the Burundian and his unsuspected victim,
But the three men, armed with knives, were not intent on theft. Instead, their task was to abduct the young woman, murder her, and cut off her genitals. According to Roque, local people discovered her mutilated body in dense bush.
The Malawian authorities seized the severed genitals in a plastic bag, when three men, presumed to be the murderers, attempted to deliver the grisly package to the man believed to have ordered the crime.
The Burundian fled from Angonia, but Roque said he has been tracked down to his home in the neighbouring district of Tsangano.
The three murderers have confessed to the crime, and said they agreed to do it, because the Burundian said he would pay them 650,000 meticais (about 10,165 US dollars, at current exchange rates).
“The Burundian knows all about it. He said he needed the sexual organs of a woman”, one of the killers told reporters. “It wasn’t me who did it, it was my friend. The Burundian promised us 650,000 meticais”.
This is the third case in Tete, in less than a month, in which women have been murdered and their genitals removed. It is believed that these body parts are used in black magic rituals.
