At Least This Hasn't Happened Under Bush's Watch

I'll give the credit to Uncle Sedano on this, for bringing it up on his show this afternoon. As he described it, perhaps the scariest story EVERRRRR!

Courtesy of Reuters.

KINSHASA: Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some eight million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, on which listeners were advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure. "You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa police chief Jean-Dieudonne Oleko said.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.