Similar to the Mafia, except that the sorcery-dabbling cannibal cult conducts extortion by threatening to eat your brain and steal your soul rather than threatening to break your legs. Via the Huffington Post:
Authorities have arrested 29 people accused of being part of a cannibal cult in Papua New Guinea’s jungle interior and charged them with the murders of seven suspected witch doctors, police said Friday. Madang Police Commander Anthony Wagambie confirmed… that the cult members ate their victims’ brains raw and made soup from their penises.
“They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong; they admit what they’ve done openly,” Wagambie told The Associated Press by telephone.
He said the killers believed that their victims practiced “sanguma,” or sorcery, and that they had been extorting money as well as demanding sex from poor villagers for their supernatural services. By eating witch doctors’ organs, the cult members believed they would attain supernatural powers and literally become bullet-proof.
“It’s prevalent cult activity,” Wagambie said. He said he believes there could be between 700 and 1,000 cult members in several villages in Papua New Guinea’s remote northeast interior. All of them might have eaten human flesh, he said.
