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NIGERIA – A man and a woman, were yesterday sentenced to 2 years imprisonment over an alleged bewitching of a woman by the Chief Magistrate’s Court in Warji Local Government Area of Bauchi State. Ibrahim Shehu Ganye, a 43 year-old man and Adama Mamuda, a 45 year-old woman, were both accused of casting a witchcraft [...]

UGANDA – Mr Benon Alyao, 73, sits on a plastic chair at Lira Central Police Station with a plaster on his head. Two other middle-aged men sit next to him. In their company is an elderly woman. The four look pensive and disillusioned. They have been left homeless after being banished from a place they [...]

An albino boy who went missing on his way home from school may have been snatched for a tribal sacrifice in South Africa, it has been reported today. The disappearance of Sibisuso Nhatave, 14, prompted a police search in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal amid fears that he had been a victim of black magic. Albinism, [...]

Allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been been accused of using ‘black magic’ to keep the leader in power. Twenty-five people close to the leader, including the chief off staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have reportedly been arrested and charged with being ‘magicians’ and invoking spirits to try and influence his policy. A growing power [...]

From the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, India, April 08, 2011. The bill for eradication of witchcraft and unfair religious practices will be tabled again in the ongoing budget session of the state legislature. The validity of the draft bill that was passed in the assembly in December 2005 but was later withheld by the upper house [...]

Lilongwe, 6 April 2011 (IRIN) – At least 45 people are behind bars in Malawi on charges of witchcraft, although there is nothing in the country’s laws to keep them there. “The beliefs of the police and courts are becoming the law,” George Thindwa, director of the Association for Secular Humanism (ASH), a local NGO, [...]

From Daily KOS As reported today on MSNBC, a Wiccan TSA employee accused of witchcraft has been fired. As described below, listed apostles of a global evangelical movement that claims to fight witchcraft will, on April 1-2, be holding a conference at Harvard University. While Salem has garnered all the attention, the real peak of [...]

By Odhiambo Joseph BBC News, Kenya Villagers, many straight from their farms, and armed with machetes, sticks and axes, are shouting and crowding round in a big group in Kenya’s fertile Kisii district. I can’t see clearly what is going on, but heavy smoke is rising from the ground and a horrible stench fills the [...]

An article by Mary Zeiss Stange in today’s On Religion column in USA Today makes reference to the Malleus Maleficarum in its examination of Bush Administration torture policies. It makes for an interesting read. I’ve included a few paragraphs below, and a link to the article. “Viewed objectively, the original witch hunts shed significant light [...]