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DAR ES SALAAM — A Kenyan man has been sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to sell an albino man to witchdoctors in Tanzania, local media reported Thursday.
A magistrate's court in northwest Tanzania sentenced 28-year old Nathan Mutei on Wednesday, after he pleaded guilty to charges of human trafficking and abduction with intention to sell an albino man, also Kenyan, for 400 million Tanzanian shillings ($263,000).
At least 53 albinos have been killed since 2007 in the east African nation and their body parts sold for use in witchcraft, especially in the remote northwest regions of Mwanza and Shinyanga, both gold-mining regions where superstition is rife.
The victims' blood and body parts are used for potions. Witchdoctors tell their clients that the body parts will bring them luck in love, life and business.
There are around 170,000 albino people, who lack pigment in their skin, eyes and hair, living in Tanzania.
Pictured: Children take a break in January 2009 in a recreational hall at the Mitindo Primary School, which has become a rare sanctuary for albino children in Tanzania.
This is far too abhorrent a story to poke fun at or make political hay with. Posted simply as an FYI. The thing is, in this day and age, what with all of the bogus race bullswaddle bantered about by one liberal or another, there still exists an African predilection to buy and sell people just as they did in the good old days.
Just breaks my heart to look at those poor kids.
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