PRETORIA – Human traffickers and their victims have a firm belief in the occult, according to a British expert investigator, Mr Andy Desmond.
He exposed the Nigerian syndicates who used ancestral worship to hold their victims captive this week.
Lowvelder attended Desmond’s talk at Unisa on Wednesday. He had been part of the investigative unit of Scotland Yard from 1981 to 2012 and now travels the world educating people on this complex crime.
The Lowveld is a hot spot due to the borders with Mozambique and Swaziland, and muti beliefs also play a part in babies being trafficked.
Desmond said he was aware of South Africa being inundated with Nigerian syndicates, and that there were victims in the country that were subject to juju captivity. “Most believe if they speak or run away, the spirits will kill them.”
He explained that juju was an ancient religion of the Yoruba people of Ifa.
“It has a bigger following than Judaism, yet only eight per cent of Nigerians actually practice it.”
According to Desmond, the victims and traffickers come predominately from Edo State.
Desmond stated that most of the girls flew to the various countries on their own, and he found this was because of their religious roots.
“I asked a girl in Copenhagen why she was not afraid. She told me it was because the spirit of her sister was with her.”
He went on to tell the story of a 16-year-old who had landed in the UK. “It took me six months to get her to trust me enough to speak about
her ordeal.” She told him that her father had taken her and sold her to the juju priest, who was paid £250 (R4 385) by traffickers.
She was told to stand naked in front of them to be humiliated into submission. He then conjured the presumed spirit into a soot potion. With a razor blade he made a number of cuts to her head, her breastbone and at the back of her shoulder blades.
He then rubbed the soot into the wounds, symbolically placing the spirit inside her.
“She swore an oath of obedience to her traffickers. She would do what she was told, have sex with whomever they told her to, and she would not go to the police.
“If she disobeyed, the spirits would find her.”
She was given alcohol while they killed a chicken. “She was given the heart to eat and the oath was sealed.”
“In the eyes of the traffickers and victims, this is real.
If you want to help those from Nigeria, you have to cast aside your own religious or personal beliefs.
These criminals are very intelligent.”
He said Anthony Harrison was the first Nigerian sentenced to 20 years for trafficking offences in which Juju had been used.
Harrison had preached at his local church and played in the church band.
