By (Xinhua): December 11 2010
MAPUTO: Police in Mozambique’s western province of Tete arrested a 68-year-old woman for trafficking human body parts, local media said on Saturday.
The woman was carrying a dried human foot when she was arrested. She confessed it belonged to her grandson who had died of malaria a week earlier.
She said she has been engaged in the trafficking for the past five decades.
The woman told the authorities that she took her grandson’s organs after his funeral, selling some parts in neighbouring Zambia and leaving the foot for purposes of witchcraft.
Holding the foot, she explained to journalists on Friday that the body parts were dried first then eaten, sold or used for superstitious purposes.
Despite not knowing exactly how much she profited from the trade, the woman said so far she had amassed about 100 head of cattle.
She claimed she had learned the trade from her grandfather. The woman claimed that also she worked with three other people, all Zambians.
Police arrested the woman after she was denounced by relatives, who accused her of witchcraft and blamed her for the disappearance of children.
In Mozambique, cases of murder and trafficking in human organs, mostly genitals, all linked to witchcraft, are alarmingly frequent.
In October, the Zambezia Provincial Court in central Mozambique, sentenced two men to 20 years in prison after finding them guilty of gouging out the eyes of a 12-year-old boy to sell to a witchdoctor in Malawi.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/Police%20arrest%20woman%20with%20body%20parts%20/-/1066/1070810/-/38obkf/-/
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