Sat, 10 Dec 2016 12:09:26 +0000
A TRADITIONAL doctor has testified how one of the suspected ritual killers in the infamous George Compound killings approached him for cleansing and exorcising of ghosts believed to have resulted from his participation in the brutal murders.
Lwambazi Mumbo yesterday testified that one of the suspects, Lucky Siame, sought his “cleansing” services through his wife who complained that her husband was seeing ghosts.
Mr Mumbo, 34, told Lusaka High Court Justice Florence Lengalenga that he came to know the accused’s wife, Mrs Siame, at her restaurant in Zingalume area where she approached him over a “mad” relative who needed treatment.
Mr Mumbo was one of the suspects arrested during the investigations into the gruesome killings which left residents agitated and in fear as they occurred around the same area and in a similar manner.
He admitted in court that at one time during his three months incarceration as a suspect, he was badly beaten by fellow inmates at a holding cell, but that he was now in protective custody after he turned State witness.
He narrated in court that after giving some medicine to the mad relative who was successfully healed, the wife to the suspected ritual killer told him about her husband who was strangely seeing ghosts in their house.
Mr Mumbo explained that initially he was told the house needed to be cleansed of evil spirits which were haunting the household, but later he was told that only one person called Collins was affected.
He told the court that he had known his client as Mr Siame until the matter came to Court where he came to know of the name Lucky Siame because that was not how he was introduced to him. “Before the cleansing exercise, the said Collins [the suspected ritual killer] told me that he had killed a man and that was where the ghost that was haunting him had come from. I had never met the wife until that day at the restaurant where she and her sister-in-law told me about a family member who was mad and who they needed me to attend to. And after successfully working with him, they then approached me over the complaint about Mr Siame who was haunted by ghosts,” Mr Mumbo told the court.
He said although he cleansed Mr Siame of the ghosts that had been haunting him, Mr Mumbo was not comfortable about knowing the source of his problem especially in the wake of the number of killings in Matero.
When asked whether he knew that killing another person was an offence, the traditional healer explained that it was the reason he reported the incident to the police, hence the arrest of the four suspects.
This is in a matter in which four suspects among them two Zambia Air Force (ZAF) officers Lewis Chishimba Bwalya, Christopher Kasapo and Elvis Nyanga, and Siame have been charged with seven counts of murder in relation to the brutal killings and removal of private parts, the heart, nose, ears and eyes in all male victims that took place in Matero’s George/Zingalume area early 2016.
The murder took place within a specified period of time in somewhat similar manner leaving deep openings where they removed the body parts.
And all victims’ bodies were found surprisingly discovered without the amount of blood expected at the scene of such gruesome crimes.
Trial in the matter continues on Monday 12 December, 2016.
