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Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:21pm EDT By Joe Bavier KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings. Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure. "You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday. Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released. "I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said. "But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said. Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members. "It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/ ) (Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2290323220080422

US 'penis photo doctor' loses job A surgeon who allegedly took a photo of a patient's penis during an operation at a US hospital is no longer working there, it has been announced. Dr Adam Hansen, of Arizona's Mayo Clinic Hospital, is accused of taking the snap while conducting gallbladder surgery earlier in December. The chief of general surgery allegedly showed the photo to fellow surgeons. The patient is a strip club owner, Sean Dubowik, whose penis is tattooed with the words "Hot Rod". A member of the surgical staff tipped off local newspaper The Arizona Republic about the incident in an anonymous call on Monday. The announcement that he was "no longer practising" at the Mayo clinic was posted on the hospital's website. It is not clear whether he resigned or was dismissed. 'Great outrage' On the same day, Mr Dubowik, 37, learned about the photo when the Nobel Prize-winning clinic, based in Scottsdale, telephoned him. The businessman said: "I got a strange call after my surgery from a doctor who said there was a problem. He said Hansen was on the phone and would explain." Mr Dubowik said that the surgeon confessed to having used his mobile phone to take the picture while inserting a catheter into his penis. The patient, who said the tattoo was done for a $1,000 (