African boys bought as sacrifices, say police

African boys are being smuggled into Britain to be killed as human sacrifices, according to a report for the Metropolitan Police.

They are brought to London and offered up in blood rituals because pastors of fundamentalist sects believe they are overwhelmed by evil spirits.

Police believe the boys, considered valuable because they are "unblemished", can be bought for as little as $25.50 (£10) in Africa.

The report was commissioned after the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, who was starved to death by relatives who thought she was possessed by the Devil.

It was drawn up by a social worker and lawyer speaking to members of African community in the capital.

They heard claims of witchcraft spells and of HIV-positive people having sex with children in an attempt to be cleansed.

The report, which was leaked yesterday, said: "People who are desperate will seek out witchcraft experts to cast spells for them.

"Members of the workshop stated that for a spell to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male child unblemished by circumcision.

"They allege that boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this purpose.

"Specific details were not forthcoming as the belief was that they would be 'dead meat' if we tell you any more."

The report also suggested that children are trafficked as domestic and sex slaves.

The authors pointed out these were allegations, and they could not test whether they were true. But they voiced concerns that children could be in serious and possibly life-threatening situations.

The report also highlighted concerns about pastors identifying children as witches, who then suffer violence at the hands of their parents.

The report says the pastors and their churches are a "lucrative business" operating throughout the UK, Europe and Africa.

It said: "A number of pastors maintain that God speaks to them and lets them know when someone is possessed ... After much debate, they acknowledged that children labelled as possessed are in danger of being beaten by their families.

"However, they would not accept that they played a major role in inciting such violence."

The report concluded that police encountered a "wall of silence" in investigating such cases.

Last month Scotland Yard disclosed that 300 black boys aged four to seven had vanished from London schools and just two had been traced.

Detectives in the capital are investigating about 30 allegations of children being abused in black magic rituals.

The potential scale of the problem was exposed by the discovery of a four-year-old boy's torso in the Thames in 2001.

Apparently the victim of an African ritual killing, he had been made to eat rock, bone and pieces of gold before he died.

Earlier this month Sita Kisanga, 35, of Hackney, London, was convicted of torturing a child, originally from Angola, whom she accused of being a witch.

She was a member of a West African church that sanctions aggressive forms of exorcism.

John Azar, an adviser to the Met, said that known cases could be the "tip of the iceberg".

But Dr William Les Henry, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmith's College, said there was an element of racism about the report.

He said: "The model that they're based on, they always seem to base their models on the fact that Africans are less civilised, less rational, so their whole systems of rationality are irrational."

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told Radio 4's Today programme that it was important countries worked together to tackle crimes related to people-trafficking.

"People are being moved across the whole world, essentially for money, by very substantial criminal organisations," he warned.

- INDEPENDENT