By Kemo Cham
Inundated with reports of witchcraft cases, the Council of Tradition Healers Sierra Leone has vowed to clean its ranks of all evil doers.
Dr ShekuTarawallie, President of the Council, said his administration has no tolerance for people engaging in witchcraft to harm innocent people, noting that they intended to do everything in their powers to keep such people in check.
“We are not against witchcraft. We are against the harmful practitioners. You can’t use your powers to do bad. Use it to do good,” he told ManoReporters.
Tarawallie was speaking on an ongoing investigation involving nine youngsters accused of witchcraft.
The case involving eight women and a man, was initially reported to the police in Newton, Four Mile, amid allegation of collective punishment by one of them.
The complainant, described by the police as a class 6 pupil, alleged that she was pushed into a ditch by her colleagues following disagreement during a witchcraft mission.
A spokesman for the Waterloo Police Division said they had to enlist the assistance of the Council of Traditional Healers for investigation because the alleged offence was committed in the spiritual world.
Assistant Superintendent of Police Allieu Jalloh, Media Officer and Spokesman for the Waterloo Police Division, said the chair-bound victim was later issued a police medical form for examination and treatment.
“They said she was pushed spiritually. The police cannot investigate that,” Jalloh told ManoReporters.
He explained that because it’s a matter of the underworld there was no way they could deal with it.
The suspects, he added, were placed under the custody of the headman of their village, which is located near Newton, while the Council of Traditional Healers pursue the investigations.
Pictures earlier shared by the police in relation to the incident showed the victim with what looked like deformed limbs – both arms and legs.
Both the police and officials of the Traditional Healers Council said the complainant had no such deformity before the alleged incident, citing relatives’ accounts.
According to Tarawallie, their investigation is in two folds – they are trying to first establish any act of witchcraft and then they will ascertain who was involved in the attack on the complainant.
“They are suspects. We are dealing with them first as suspects,” he said.
He explained that six suspects were initially presented to his team for questioning, noting that the number is likely to go up as the suspects during interrogation were implicating others.
Tarawallie added that some of the suspects had admitted involvement in the incident but claimed they committed it along with many others.
“In our law as traditional healers, when someone confesses that he is a witch and implicate others, we don’t just believe in the story, because we have to screen the accuser and the ones he is implicating. We use our investigation spiritually to firstly determine if the person is a witch. Then we pursue the others,” he said.
Tarawalloie said if found guilty, the accused would face the full force of their laws, which include disarming them. He said how this is done depends on how their families relate with the Council on the matter.
“We will punish them spiritually as they punished the girl. Then we will disarm them. The instrument they use to do manipulation, we will disarm them so that they become powerless,” he said.
“If their parents don’t talk to this office, when we act, that will affect their future. If the parents provide guaranty that they won’t get involved in any illegal act, they will be disarmed politely, which means they will be in normal condition. The alternative is, we do it in a way that it could affect them physically,” he explained.
Witchcraft is an old age issue in Sierra Leone. But it became rampant recently, involving deaths in some cases.
Many of the cases were reported in the Waterloo axis.
For instance, in April this year, the remains of a University of Sierra Leone lecturer were discovered in the ‘shrine’ of a witchdoctor about three weeks after he went missing.
Weeks later, in May, police raided the shrine of another witchdoctor in the same Newton area, and discovered an assortment of suspicious stuff, including human bones, according to reports.
Nonetheless, Tarawallie called on the general public and the government to have confidence in his institution, noting that as traditional healers, their goal is to help in national development. He stressed that they want to use their “gift” to attract investment rather than cause harm to any innocent person.
“Witchcraft is a crime under our law. It’s against our ethics to misuse your means to damage someone or to engage in any malpractice to harm others. You can be a witch but you must use it for something good, like how scientist do it,” he said.
“I want the public to have confidence in this institution. We are here to help the government, because we believe that without our help, the country risk having bad image. That can drive away investors, because outsiders will see us as a witchcraft zone,” he added.
