Saturday, November 21, 2009

Peru: Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/20/peru-gang-killing-human-fat

Rory Carroll
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:38 EST

Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment

The remains of victims that were allegedly kidnapped and killed by a criminal gang in the jungle of Peru for human fat trafficking.

A Peruvian gang that allegedly killed people and drained fat from their corpses for use in cosmetics may have been inspired by a grisly Andean legend.

Hilarió Cudeña Simon, the alleged ringleader, linked the crimes to tales of demonic assassins, known as Pishtacos, who purportedly waylaid victims in pre-Columbian times, police said.

Peru reacted with revulsion and horror to reports that scores of peasants may have been butchered by the gang, which was said to have operated in Huánuco, a rural province dotted with Inca temples between the jungle and Andean peaks.

Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police, said Cudeña and three other suspects were in custody and that another seven gang members were being hunted.

The jailed men have confessed to killing five people, but police suspect the number of victims is far higher, with 60 people reported missing in Huánuco this year alone. Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.

At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. "The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.

Police said they received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat, which exported the amber liquid to Europe as anti-wrinkle cream. In addition to the alleged ringleader the suspects were named as Segundo Castillejos Agüero, Marcos Veramendi Princípe and Enadina Estela Claudio. They have been charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking.

The alleged plot has evoked comparisons to Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume in which a killer distills the essence of his victims into a jar. Others compare it to the film Fight Club in which a character played by Brad Pitt steals bags of human fat from a liposuction clinic to make soap.

The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest.

The suspects allegedly would sever victims' heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles, which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below. Members claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.

Medical experts said human fat had cosmetic applications to keep skin supple, but were sceptical about an international black market. "It doesn't make any sense, because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing to donate," Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, told the Associated Press.

Peruvians expressed shock that grisly Andean legends they heard from their grandparents could turn out to have a modern twist. "It's really incredible that killers like this could exist today," said one contributor to the newspaper Peru21.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Homeless Men Kill, Dismember, Eat Victim in Russian Urals

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20091113/156824966.html

Homeless Men Kill, Dismember, Eat Victim in Russian Urals
RIA Novosti
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:32 EST
© RIA Novosti

A 25-year old man was killed, dismembered, eaten and parts of his body sold to a nearby fast-food stand in the Perm region of the Russian Urals, criminal investigators have reported.

According to the official site of the local Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor's office, three homeless men killed the victim out of "personal enmity."

"They stabbed him several times with a knife and a hit him with a hammer. The victim died at the scene of the crime," the site reports.

All three of the perpetrators, who have previous criminal records, have been detained. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

No One Else Will Stop The Killing

The serpent puppet masters don't want the killing to stop. The are cruel plus they must have human sacrifice for their god of evil, set-an!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23828.htm

No One Else Will Stop The Killing
Mike Ferner
Information Clearing House
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:36 EDT
Veterans' Group To Members: Multiply Resistance By Any Peaceful Means Possible

In a statement directed to the U.S. House of Representatives, President Obama and its membership, Veterans For Peace urged its chapters to demonstrate opposition to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan by doing two things:

1) Take the actions listed below within the next several days, before President Obama decides to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and

2) Plan acts of even greater resistance during the two days following any such decision.

Veterans' Group To Members: Multiply Resistance By Any Peaceful Means Possible

Continue writing and calling our representatives and demanding peace.

· If we've done that: take to the streets

· If we've done that: sit down in the streets

· If we've done that: sit down in Congressional offices

· If we've done that: sit down, clog up, incapacitate, call in sick, withdraw consent and generally bring the nation's business to a halt, wherever and whenever we can, with any peaceful means available.

To President Obama and the House of Representatives:

As veterans of our nation's wars, we insist you hear our call.

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin spoke an unassailable truth when he said, "War would end if the dead could return." If you believe that is true, Mr. President and Members of the House, you must heed our counsel well: we are the closest anyone can come to that truth the dead would speak. Stop the killing!

Because we personally understand what war truly means, we have written, called and demonstrated repeatedly for an end to the killing in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have protested at and have been arrested in House Office Buildings, the House Gallery, the White House and Congressional offices across the nation. We have pleaded, then demanded, that you stop the suffering in these countries. Although promised prior to the election, no combat brigades have returned from Iraq. And now we can smell the mire of escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Nevertheless, we cannot cease to appeal to that spark of humanity in your hearts. We know wealthy, powerful interests such as weapons contractors, lobbyists and right-wing broadcasters daily make a deafening noise, trying to drown out the voice that insists, "Stop the killing." We also know that no matter how quiet the voice of humanity might become, it can never be silenced.

So we lift up to you voices much more eloquent than our own, voices of soldiers who survived the worst fighting human beings have ever experienced, World War One. For nearly 100 years, the wisdom and compassion of their poetry has endured. Their words now stand as one of the world's most powerful witnesses to the madness of war.

You must hear them.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God's sight
War ever, ever can be right.
- From "Foreword" by British ambulance driver, Robert Service
And
...
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
- From "Dulce et Decorum est" (It is Sweet and Right to Die for Your Country)
by British Army Lt. Wilfred Owen, killed a week before the 1918 Armistice.

More than that we cannot say to you, so we will address our former brothers and sisters in arms who are now our brothers and sisters in peace.

To members of Veterans For Peace:

At one time in our lives we bore the hardships and dangers of military service. We were not strangers to privation, or fear, or acts of courage. Although the America of our childhood history books has been shaken and some would say, shattered by what we learned in the military and since, we can still hear the call to service when it is clear and true.

Nothing could be more clear or true today than the need for us to do everything we humanly can to stop the killing. Not just stop the escalation - stop the killing. Bring all the troops home. Take care of them when they get here. Pay to rebuild what we have destroyed.

It is important for us to rededicate ourselves to the resolution we adopted at our 2008 convention: Afghanistan is not "the right war." We must leave as soon as possible.

This is important to repeat because this administration and some in Congress would have us believe that we cannot withdraw immediately from Afghanistan, we must provide some stability and protection from the likes of the Taliban.

So we state without doubt: our occupation of Afghanistan is driving the violent opposition to it. More U.S. troops and more occupation will mean more anger and yet more violent reaction from those whose lands we occupy.

We must rededicate ourselves to ending this cycle of violence.

The Taliban recruit from the ranks of the unemployed and the poor. One important way to reduce unemployment, poverty and Taliban recruits is to fund programs that provide work and income. To say that the government of Afghanistan is corrupt and that economic development funds are wasted is to conveniently ignore the real reason we are in Afghanistan.

Throughout Afghanistan, grassroots networks are making a difference at the local and tribal level. This is where we should put our money.

But we are not in Afghanistan to give them democracy, even if that were possible. Neither is our purpose to build up that country's smaller, more democratic institutions that serve the population. We occupy Afghanistan because America the Empire demands control of its resources and to have a strategic locations from which to project military power. As the Secretary-General of NATO said recently, "We need a stable government in Afghanistan, a government that we can deal with."

And no one - NO one, but us is going to stop the killing; neither the President nor the Congress. We can beseech them, ask them, demand from them that they stop the killing and bring all the troops home. But until we exert the power of massive resistance to the Empire that only we can exert, it will keep rolling over Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis and whoever else that is in its way.

We must continue writing and calling our representatives and demanding peace. If we've done that we must take to the streets. If we've done that we must sit down in the streets. If we've done that we must sit down in Congressional offices and if we've done that we must sit down, clog up, incapacitate, withdraw our consent and generally bring business as usual to a halt wherever we can, with any peaceful means available.

If we do not take every step we can we know what will happen. Combat brigades will stay in Iraq, drone attacks, Special Forces and the CIA will continue to kill and maim in Pakistan, and 40, 60, 80,000 more troops will be sent to Afghanistan where the suffering and death will increase dramatically - for years to come.

Even when we do all of the above we must anticipate that it may not be enough to stay the hand of death. The American Empire is a mighty machine. We will need to make common cause with all those living in the heart of Empire who are also its victims. We know who they are. We see them every day - on the streets, where we work, where we shop, where we pray, where we play.

They and we are the common folk, not possessed of significant wealth. But we are skilled and numerous and creative and tenacious. And we have nothing but time. The Empire may be mighty but it is also as of glass - the next blow against it may well be the one that sends a crack through its entire length, the next blow causing it to shatter. We cannot know when that will happen or whose blow may be the deciding one. Our job is simple: to never quit. To use a military analogy, as long as an army, no matter how tattered, remains in the field, the revolution continues.

That's all we have to do. But we must do it. Starting now.

Ferner is a former Navy hospital corpsman and President of Veterans For Peace mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Claire Colley interviews Rana Husseini, author of 'Murder in the Name of Honour'

I'm including this article here because it is mentioned in this article that 'blood cleanses' and the belief that blood cleanses is a deep belief of human sacrifice (see the connnection?)

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=99708

16/07/2009 4:36 pm
Claire Colley interviews Rana Husseini, author of 'Murder in the Name of Honour', for the New Statesman.

Your book Murder in the Name of Honour continues your efforts to break the silence around honour killings. What first inspired your campaign?

I was reporting for the Jordan Times and encountered a horrific case of a 16-year-old girl called Kifaya, who was killed because she was raped by her brother and the family blamed her for tarnishing their honour. I found it very hard to comprehend.

I was sitting talking to her uncles and they were still blaming her. When I published the story, a woman rang the paper screaming that we shouldn’t cover these crimes. I was enraged that this call came from a woman. So, I decided to follow my heart; I would report each case and force people to act. It worked – a movement happened after that. Now I call them “so-called honour killings” because they have nothing to do with real honour.

You detail murder after murder in the book, almost pummelling the reader. Was this your intention?

You have to put a face to and humanise the victims. So many women are deprived of their right to live. I wanted people to read this book and be angry. When a family thinks that its female relative has tarnished its reputation, by engaging in sexual relations, by being a victim of rape, incest, by marrying the man of her choice, or even just speaking with a strange man, it feels the only way to fix things is with blood. Blood cleanses honour. Many families, when they kill their relative, want to get rid of the shame completely. Sometimes they don’t even take the corpse, and often women are buried in unmarked graves. I wanted to be the voice of these women so that people become enraged and do something.

Murder in the Name of Honour shows how you tried to alter the laws in Jordan that permit these murders. Has there been any change?

Laws alone are not going to end the crime, or protect women, but we have to try to change them, for women’s dignity. You can write a bad cheque in Jordan and get a longer sentence than for killing a woman in the name of honour. The laws haven’t changed, but attitudes have, among lawyers, judges and the police. They care more now. They don’t treat these crimes as just another woman who was killed. Now, finally, there is talk about changing the law.

The book shows that honour crimes aren’t solely a problem for Muslim cultures.

They’re not, but Muslims have always been portrayed in a negative manner. The media are not fair. Honour violence is an international phenomenon. In the book, there’s a case of a Sikh woman killed. In Italy, there were two recent cases involving Christians. And there are reports of it happening in small villages in Spain and Greece. It happens everywhere.

You interviewed several murderers for the book. How did that feel?

The first time I met Sarhan, who had killed his sister Yasmin, I felt a lot of anger. There he was, sitting and smiling. But I interviewed him several times and realised that he was ignorant. These are ignorant people. One time I suggested to him, “You didn’t want to kill your sister. Were you put in this situation?” And he said he regretted it but would do it again. He said he wished society would execute honour killers, and then his family would not have pushed him. That’s not a man proud of his actions. Men are forced into the situation by their families.

You’ve received death threats for your activist work. How do you manage these?

I believe in fate and am a firm believer in what I do. I feel that when it is my time to go, nothing will stop it. I’m doing right things that don’t contradict human rights or religion; any normal person would know that those killings are wrong. Yet I have people accusing me of being a Zionist agent, a radical feminist, a western agent who wants to destroy the morals of society. But I don’t lose sleep over death threats. There will always be people who will oppose you. That’s life.

“Murder in the Name of Honour: the True Story of One Woman’s Heroic Fight Against an Unbelievable Crime” is published by Oneworld (£12.99)

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Witnesses testify in albino trial

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8071405.stm

Witnesses testify in albino trial
Witnesses have testified in the case of 11 men in Burundi, accused of the attempted murder of albino people and selling of their body parts.

Initial charges of murder have been dropped because the prosecution failed to produce enough evidence.

Police suspect the body parts are being sold in neighbouring Tanzania, for use in witchcraft.

Forty-six albino people have been murdered in Tanzania in the past 18 months, but no-one has been convicted.

But the violence against albinos is not restricted to Tanzania; last November a six-year-old albino girl in Burundi was found dead with her head and limbs removed.

'Desecrating graves'

Thursday's hearing in the eastern province of Ruyigi, near the Tanzanian border, has generated a great deal of interest.

Witnesses travelled from the remote north-east of Burundi to give testimony linking one of the defendants with the killers of a married man with albinism whose body parts were allegedly taken to Tanzania.

The case began last week, but had to be adjourned after witnesses failed to show up.

The BBC's Prime Ndikumagenge says the courtroom is so crammed many people are waiting outside to hear details of the evidence second hand.

Our reporter says eight of the accused allegedly helped traffic albino body parts and desecrated a graveyard to take the parts of someone who was buried.

The rest of the defendants are accused of attempting to kill an albino child. The accused deny the charges.

Witchdoctors in the region are known to tell clients that potions made with albino body parts will bring them luck in love, life and business.

BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says Tanzania's government has promised action and the fact that there have been no reported attacks or murders of albinos for two months in Tanzania provides some hope.

Hundreds of people including witchdoctors and business people have been arrested but the justice system in Tanzania is notoriously slow and corrupt and so far nobody has been convicted, he says.

Albinism affects one in 20,000 people worldwide, but in Tanzania the prevalence appears to be much higher.

The Albino Association of Tanzania says that although just 4,000 albinos are officially registered in the country, they believe the actual number could be as high as 173,000. A census is now under way to try to verify the figures.

Albinos butchered for 'magic potions' in Tanzania

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8296495.stm

Erick David Nampesya
BBC
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:10 EDT
© BBC Mariam Staford Bandaba is too scared to return to her home village

One year ago, Mariam Staford Bandaba, an albino woman living in Tanzania, was viciously attacked by a machete-wielding gang who tried to kill her and sell her remains for witchcraft.

She escaped with her life, but only just.

The attackers chopped off one of her hands - the other had to be amputated in hospital, where she spent weeks recovering from her horrific injuries.

Traumatised, Ms Staford Bandaba then took the brave step of identifying her attackers.

She was taken to a safe-house where she lived under government protection.

But the government recently decided she could no longer live there, leaving the 28-year-old fearing for her safety.

The administrative officer in the village where she was re-housed, Erasmus Rugarabamu, told the BBC Swahili service that the situation had improved and no albinos had been killed in her home village in the north-western Kagera region in the past year.

The decision by the authorities comes just a few weeks after a court sentenced three men to death for the murder of an albino boy.

Albino murders

Ms Staford Bandaba is one of thousands of people with albinism who live in fear in Tanzania.

Her harrowing tale has become commonplace in a country where 53 albinos are believed to have been murdered in the past two years.

Albinos, who are pale because of a lack of pigment in their skin, have been routinely killed because witchdoctors say that potions made with their body parts will bring good fortune in love, life and business to those who use them.

The killings have also spread to neighbouring Burundi where at least 12 people have been murdered.

The victims were mutilated and their body parts are believed to have been sold in Tanzania to make potions.

One man was sentenced to death and eight others were jailed in Burundi earlier this year.

Ms Staford Bandaba's alleged attackers have been caught in north-western Tanzania, the region where the vast majority of the murders have been carried out.

Tears

The story of her eviction caught the attention of a businessman who has agreed to let her and her mother live in a room in his house for a year.

But after that she has no idea what will happen to her.

Before moving out of the safe house, she told me that she broke down in tears when the district commissioner told her the news.

"I can't imagine what will happen. What I did in front of him was just start crying."

She is even more upset because it is not just her who had to leave.

Her father and four siblings who were taking care of her and feeding her were also evicted.

They have had no choice but to return to the village where she was so brutally attacked.

Her father, Staford Bandaba, admitted he was very anxious about reprisal attacks being carried out on his family.

"Those who are responsible, all their relatives are still living there in the village, and those released from prison, are still living where we were living. So how can we stay there?"

But Mr Rugarabamu defended the government's decision.

"Some of the attackers were found not guilty, so we can't keep them in prison, so they will be allowed to return to the village according to the law. But those found guilty are still in prison awaiting their fate."

That is little comfort for Ms Staford Bandaba's father.

Now that she no longer has government protection, "We are worried that they will finish her off."

And he is not the only one who thinks that could happen.

Condemnation

"Albinos are still being hunted and we don't yet know how to solve the problem," one local resident says.

"We cannot understand this decision."

"The government only seems to be doing half its duty. They started well and they should continue to help Mariam get a permanent house which will be safe," another person tells me.

President Jakaya Kikwete has said the albino murders have brought shame to Tanzania and his government has taken steps to identify and prosecute the perpetrators.

In March thousands of people took part in an exercise to identify those they suspected of being involved, by filling in forms anonymously.

The authorities have also issued a ban on all traditional healers, and several people have been arrested.

The government has now given Ms Staford Bandaba a plot of land to build a house away from her village.

But she says she has no money for the construction work, leaving her feeling abandoned at a time when she needs the help most.

"I was born an albino," she says. "But my attackers have made me disabled. I am begging all Tanzanians to kindly keep on helping me, because my situation is now worse. I have no hands."

Fortunately, a local businessman has heard her plea.

But in a year's time, Ms Staford Bandaba will once again be faced with the prospect of having to return to the village where she was nearly killed.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Human sacrifice scientists discovered in India

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=553183

Thursday 15th October, 2009
Human sacrifice scientists discovered in India
Big News Network.com Monday 12th October, 2009

Two senior scientists of India’s Defence Research and Development Establishment at Gwalior have been accused of attempting to use a junior colleague as a human sacrifice.

Police have alleged a complaint was lodged by the wife of Sushil Kumar, a junior scientist at the DRDE.

Shradha Sharma, approached police on Saturday night to accuse the senior scientists of being involved in witchcraft and attempting to make a human sacrifice of her husband.

While the police have acted on the complaint, they have only charged the scientists over causing hurt, criminal intimidation and wrongful confinement.

According to the complaint, one of the scientists invited Sushil Kumar, who had not been unwell, to his residence on the DRDE campus to cure him.

It is alleged that after entering the residence, the two scientists asked Sushil to go to sleep, before producing a sharp edged weapon.

According to the wife’s testimony, Sushil managed to run from the house after fighting off the men.