Paganism/Satanism: Human Sacrifice was practiced by pagan Druids way back in history the jungle' (original) (raw)

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Fear of ritual murder kept the pre-Christian pagan 'rabble' in order

Druids and human sacrifice

Channel 4 - Mysterious History: Who were the Druids?

Halloween & Human Sacrifice - by Karleen E. Page

13May03 - Glasgow Herald - Was Mackintosh inspired by the occult?

See: The Golden Bough - by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer

and... The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, their nature and legacy - by professor of History at Bristol University - and Ewan Blair's tutor on the subject - Ronald Hutton - Blackwells - 1993.

Channel 4 - Mysterious History: Who were the Druids?

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/R/real_wizards/mysterious.html

The legendary Merlin was the forerunner of all the wizards of fiction, from Gandalf to Harry Potter. The historical Merlin seems to have been something very different but equally mysterious: a druid.

Who were the Druids?

The Roman occupation of Britain lasted from 43AD to around 400. Before the Romans invaded, the druid priesthood was the undisputed power in the land. For the previous two or three centuries the druids had been a dominant force throughout what was then the Celtic world, which included France, the Netherlands and parts of Scandinavia as well as Britain.

History is written by the victors; this can make it hard to get a clear picture of the people on the losing side. When the Romans conquered the Celts and Ancient Britons, they gave unflattering descriptions of the druids. Some sources describe the druids as bloodthirsty barbarians who were addicted to human sacrifice. Others maintain that they were gentle and peaceful, and that they derived their authority from being in touch with nature.

There are a few things we can say for certain.

Druids:

• held ceremonies in oak groves
• saw mistletoe as a sacred plant with healing powers
• practised divination and believed they could foretell the future

What will the future bring?

Their powers of divination underpinned the druids' authority. Their supposed ability to foretell the future made the druids a vital source of information, equally able to advise the community on when to start the harvesting and the king on when to go to war. Like Arthur's adviser, Merlin, the druids wielded a power based on their superior insight into the workings of the universe.

Digging for facts

Information about druid practices can also be gained from archaeological evidence. The Gundestrup Cauldron was preserved for 2000 years in a peat bog in Denmark. Intricately carved and made of solid silver, the cauldron looks like a classic piece of wizard's equipment. It seems to have been put in the bog as a form of sacrifice, after being used in ceremonies for many years. The carvings on the cauldron present a wild and hallucinatory panorama: there is a horned god; figures which are half human, half animal; and scenes of animal and perhaps human sacrifice.

More gruesome - and mysterious - evidence is supplied by Tollund Man. The body of Tollund Man was found in 1950 in a Danish peat bog, where - like the Gundestrup Cauldron - it had been preserved since the 1st century BC. Tollund Man was about 40; he was stripped naked and garrotted before his body was laid to rest in the bog. Examination of his stomach contents found a wide variety of different grains, suggesting a ritual last meal. There were also traces of ergot, a highly toxic mould found on rye. If Tollund Man was the victim of ergot poisoning ('ergotism') he would have suffered convulsions and hallucinations. It may be that this ergot-induced trance state was part of a ritual sacrifice.

Tollund Man was not the only victim. Other bog bodies have been found in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland - and Britain. In 1984, a 2000-year-old body was found in a peat bog in Cheshire: Lindow Man. This time the signs of human sacrifice were unmistakable. Lindow Man had been struck on the head, strangled and had his throat cut, perhaps to drain the body of blood. He was young, fit and well-groomed, suggesting high social status. There was no ergot in his stomach; but there were traces of mistletoe, suggesting a definite druidical connection.

End of the Druid

The druids' political authority was severely limited under Roman rule. However, druidical practices and Roman religion seem to have coexisted. In particular, the druidical arts of divination appear to have survived into the Roman era: one Romano-British burial site in Colchester has been found to contain equipment for a divining ritual. As the Roman Empire crumbled in the 5th century AD, it is not hard to see how men such as Merlin could have revived druidical practices.

Wizardry as we know it is deeply marked by druidical practices. But the druids themselves had roots in a truly ancient and mysterious form of magic: shamanism.

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/R/real_wizards/mysterious.html

Halloween & Human Sacrifice

by Karleen E. Page

"All those who hate Me love death." (Proverbs 8:36)

There is a debate among scholars as to whether human sacrifices were performed during Druid/Celtic celebrations of Halloween. Of course modern druids will say that they were not. They say that the only evidence that this custom was practiced is a reference in an ancient Roman document by Julius Caesar (see below). We do know that human sacrifice was practiced in this part of the world in ancient times because of several "bog men", mummies preserved in the peat bogs that show signs of ritual killing. Of course, there would be no remains of any humans that were sacrificed in the fire. At any rate, the word "bonfire" comes from a compound of the Middle English words bon (bone) and fir (fire) ... meaning a fire kindled upon bones.

Merle Severy, "The Celts," National Geographic (May 1977), pages 625-626, describes "the eve of Samhain... the start of the Celtic new year:

"According to the Dinshenchas, a medieval collection of "the lore of prominent places," firstborn children were sacrificed before a great idol to ensure fertility of cattle and crops. Samhain eve was a night of dread and danger. At this juncture of the old year and the new, our world and the otherworld opened up to each other. The dead returned, ghosts and demons were abroad, and the future could be seen.. . . Behind such Halloween games as bobbing for apples lie Celtic divination arts to discern who would marry, thrive, or die in the coming year. Behind the masks and mischief, the jack-o'lanterns and food offerings, lurk the fear of malevolent spirits and the rites to propitiate them."

Page 601 gives additional insight:

"Tacitus tells us of the bloodstained Druid altars of Anglesey in Wales."

Julius Caesar on Celtic Sacrifices

The whole nation of the Gauls is greatly devoted to ritual observances, and for that reason those who are smitten with the more grievous maladies and who are engaged in the perils of battle either sacrifice human victims or vow so to do, employing the druids as ministers for such sacrifices. They believe, in effect, that, unless for a man's life a man's life be paid, the majesty of the immortal gods may not be appeased; and in public, as in private life they observe an ordinance of sacrifices of the same kind. Others use figures of immense size whose limbs, woven out of twigs, they fill with living men and set on fire, and the men perish in a sheet of flame. They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods; but when the supply of such fails they resort to the execution even of the innocent.

The classical author Diodorus Siculus also reported scenes of human sacrifice [by the Druids].

'When they attempt divination upon important matters they practice a strange and incredible custom, for they kill a man by a knife-stab in the region above his midriff.' After the sacrificial victim fell dead...'they foretell the future by the convulsions of his limbs and the pouring of his blood." [Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books), pages 17-19.]

"The 1984 discovery of a sacrificial victim in Cheshire, England, helps validate the reality of ritualistic human sacrifice. The well-preserved young man had apparently belonged to an elite social class in the second century BC. After two sharp blows to the head, he had been strangled. Then, like the countless sacrifices to Aztec and Mayan gods, his body had been drained of the human blood needed to please and appease their god(s)."

Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books), page 10.]

The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, "How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same." You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it. Deuteronomy 12:29-32

Was Mackintosh inspired by the occult?

Mysticism infuses works, claims artist

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/13-5-19103-0-33-27.html

PHIL MILLER - Glasgow Herald - 13May03

NEW research claims to have revealed the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh were infused with secret occult symbols and references to mystic religions.

Mackintosh, one of the most revered artists in Scottish history, was intimate with a number of different spiritual beliefs and made sure his designs, art and architecture contained secret emblems, signs, and allusions.

It is thought that he was inspired by the esoteric beliefs of his wife, Margaret Macdonald, and tutored in arcane knowledge by Fra Newbery, the director of the Glasgow School of Art, and included mystic symbols in his work so that some of their "magic" was present in his designs.

Dai Vaughan, an artist and designer who produced the decorative panels for the Mackintosh-designed House for an Art Lover in Glasgow, has revealed his conclusions after years of research.

The designer, who has written a paper on his research for the latest journal of the CR Mackintosh Society, said the artist was profoundly influenced by the mysticism that gained popularity at the beginning of the last century and found adherents among his friends and colleagues.

Mr Vaughan said understanding the occult resonance of many of the symbols that recur often in Mackintosh's work - the symbols of the tree and the rose, for example - shed new light on his work.

"I have been discovering a lot of symbols in his work. There is an awful lot there but I think people don't want to know about it, especially the Mackintosh fans who get very uneasy about it. I have no doubt that Mackintosh deliberately used this symbolism. He wanted to create a kind of sympathetic magic within his work," Mr Vaughan said.

For example, he has spotted in one of Mackintosh's works, The Wassail, the shape of a scarab, a beetle held by the Egyptians to be a mystic sign of renewal, while in a mural from the Buchanan Street Tea Room, he finds a "tree of life" based on eastern spiritual diagrams that feature "chakras", or wheels of energy.

Mr Vaughan writes: "My belief is that here we can see illustrated the chakras as wheels of vital energy situated along the spinal column. They are driving a flow of physiological and spiritual energy from the base of the spine upwards to open the thousand petalled lotus at the crown of the head."

He adds: "It is embarrassing for some people, these beliefs are not taken seriously these days. But he put these signs in deliberately; his friends and peers recognised them.

"Often his wife gets a bad press because she was into (these ideas) - but clearly he was too."

At the turn of the 20th century, many in the art world were fascinated with eastern religions, the occult, and "secret societies" such as the Theosophical Society, the Golden Dawn and spiritualism.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was deeply interested in the spirit world, and Mackintosh' wife was known for her mystical beliefs and faerie-influenced art.

They were also both influenced by the Belgian mystical writer Maurice Maeterlinck and Max Muller, a spiritualist who gave lectures in Glasgow.

Mackintosh himself often quoted from WR Lethaby's esoteric text, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, which propounded a system of cosmic symbolism: using trees, squares and circles as some kind of elemental building system.

The Mackintoshes also had a close friendship with Anna and Patrick Geddes. The Geddeses, who were at the forefront of the "Celtic Revival" in Scotland, also had connections with the theosophy movement.

Mr Vaughan - whose company also makes reproduction Mackintosh furniture - is hoping to present his years of research into the artist's beliefs in a book. Last night Anne Ellis, a member of the CRM Society and the former curator of Hill House, the home Mackintosh designed in Helensburgh, said: "I certainly find Dai's research very interesting. There are certainly signs and symbols there, but we cannot say what they meant to Mackintosh, he did not write much down.

"He wasn't a good proselytiser and although these signs were symbolic, what they meant to him will always remain a mystery. These details are very interesting for the general public to know, but they meant so much in context and now that context has been removed.

"I doubt we shall ever know what they meant to Mackintosh."

Symbols of mystery

• The rose sacred to Venus, the rose was also a symbol of the Egyptian goddess Isis. To the mystical Rosicrucian society, the rose was the symbol of nature itself.
• The scarab the Egyptian sign of renewal and regeneration.
• Tree of life again an Egyptian symbol of life, and present throughout Mackintosh's work, often entwined with roses.
• The eye connected to Horus, the ancient Egyptian god of the sky. A weeping eye also often appears in his wife, Margaret Macdonald's paintings.
• The square and the circle shapes frequent in Mackintosh's work, which he studied in a book that he often quoted from, Architecture: Mysticism and Myth, by WR Lethaby.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/13-5-19103-0-33-27.html

Satanism and the occult - news blog

Bishop Sean Manchester ondiabolism & the modern church

13Jan13 - Sunday Express: JIMMY SAVILE WAS PART OF SATANIC RING

15Dec12 - Western Morning News - Courage of victims helps put sex abusers Jack Kemp and Peter Petrauske in jail

21Sep12 - Friday Drivetime - Investigative journalist Roger Cook uncovers Leeds satanic ring and is then closed down by Murdoch News of the World libel campaign

16Nov02 - The Guardian - Modern Satanism: Flirting with Hitler

07Mar08 - Metro - Lesbian 'vampire' lovers jailed for teen murder

28Oct04 - Times & MOD Questions in the House of Commons - Satanism in the Royal Navy

02Jul04 - BBC - Occult link to drowned councillor

02Jul04 - The Times - Satanist mystery of parish councillor found dead in sea

23Jan04 - Guardian - 35 years on, murders still bedevil Chianti's rolling hills

30Apr03 - BBC - Haiti makes voodoo official

10Mar03 - Daily Mirror - Hunting the Voodoo Killers

10Jan03 - The Sun - Mum eaten by her son

07Jan03 - Daily Mirror - Satanist Guilty of Two Killings

08Dec02 - BBC - Torso case woman is deported

16Nov02 - Guardian - Flirting with Hitler

30Sep02 - Pravda - Satanism on the Move in Russia

17Jul02 - BBC (x2) - Vampire boy on murder charge 'asked officer to bite him'

15Jul02 - BBC - Four Ukrainians held for cannibalism

02Jun02 - Observer - Thames torso boy was sacrificed

07Apr02 - Observer -Thais flock to magic guru

08Mar02 - BBC - Voodoo 'practised in UK'

26Feb02 - BBC - Father 'kills son in ritual sacrifice'

19Mar01 - Pravda - Satanists may endanger Russia's security

SPOTLIGHT ON - February 2nd 2002.............

Guardian - Tour of Britain's bizarre underworld

Guardian - Self-styled vampire reveals British link

Independent - Vampire couple jailed for satanic murder

Daily Telegraph - Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites

Reuters - Murder Throws Spotlight on Rise in Satanism

Irish Independent - Satanic killers grin as they are locked away

Evening Standard - Met honours men who trapped satanic killer

Bilderberg rep Ken Clarke put Jimmy Savile in satanic abuse post

The UK's main Bilderberg steering committee member & current cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke was responsible for the appointment of one of Britains most prolific ever sex offenders to a key role at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

Today's Sunday Express also 'outs' Savile as being part of a satanic coven at Stoke Mandeville hospital (below)

Strangely enough investigative journalist Roger Cook, who I interviewed on the topic last year, also mentions a Leeds based satanic abuse circle based around 'The Sorcerers' Apprentice' shop run by one Chris Bray.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/63107

Shortly after that edition of 'The Cook Report' Murdoch's News of the World conducted a month long smear campaign against Roger and his programme which ended up with ITV axing The Cook Report... which had been the most popular current affairs programme in British television history pulling in audiences weekly of up to 10-12 million.

JIMMY SAVILE WAS PART OF SATANIC RING

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370439/Jimmy-Savile-was-part-of-satanic-ring

Jimmy Savile raped a 12-year-old girl

Sunday Express - January 13, 2013 - By James Fielding

JIMMY SAVILE beat and raped a 12-year-old girl during a secret satanic ritual in a hospital.

The perverted star wore a hooded robe and mask as he abused the terrifi ed victim in a candle-lit basement.

He also chanted “Hail Satan” in Latin as other paedophile devil worshippers joined in and assaulted the girl at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. The attack, which happened in 1975, shines a sinister new light on the former DJ’s 54-year reign of terror.

Savile, who died aged 84 in October 2011, is now Britain’s worst sex offender after police revealed he preyed on at least 450 victims aged eight to 47.

The girl kept her torment hidden for nearly 20 years before finally opening up to therapist Valerie Sinason.

Dr Sinason told the Sunday Express she first spoke to the victim in 1992. “She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor.

“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.

“She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame.

“She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latinised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”

Savile was a volunteer porter and fundraiser at the hospital between 1965 and 1988 and had his own quarters there.

Five years after the hospital attack, he abused a second victim during another black mass ceremony held at a house in a wealthy London street.

The woman was 21 at the time and was made to attend an orgy, which later took on a darker twist.

Dr Sinason, director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, said: “A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.

“The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.

“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”

Both victims contacted Dr Sinason, who is president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, while she was involved in a Department of Health-funded study into sexual abuse committed during rituals and religious ceremonies. She said: “Both these witnesses did speak to police at the time but were vulnerable witnesses and on encountering any surprise or shock did not dare to give all the details.”

The police took no action.

Dr Sinason added: “Savile was still a huge celebrity in the early Nineties, let’s not forget, and there was never any action taken against him or any of the others involved.

“Neither girl knew one another, they lived in different parts of the country and contacted me a year apart yet their experiences are very similar. Whether Savile was a practising Satanist or merely enjoyed dressing up to scare his victims even more will perhaps never be known but he left those two girls mentally scarred.”

Dr Sinason has passed details of the abuse to officers from the Savile inquiry, Operation Yewtree.

A joint report published on Friday by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC uncovered at least 30 claims of abuse at Stoke Mandeville.

The hospital said it was unable to discuss individual cases while its own “Speaking Out” investigation was ongoing.

Anne Eden, chief executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “As the investigation’s name suggests, it is very keen to hear from anybody with any knowledge that they feel could help its work or anybody that needs support because of Jimmy Savile’s alleged behaviour.”

This is the sort of ritual abuse Private Eye repeatedly says cannot and does not exist

Courage of victims helps put sex abusers Jack Kemp and Peter Petrauske in jail

Saturday, December 15, 2012 Western Morning News

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Courage-victims-helps-sex-abusers-Jack-Kemp-Peter/story-17593796-detail/story.html

Three women bravely told of the sickening abuse they endured as children up to 30 years ago at the hands of Kemp, Petrauske and others.

The victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sat in the witness box protected from the view of their abusers by large, grey screens.

Peter Petrauske

Recounting the horror they suffered when they were aged from three to 15 years old from the 1970s onwards was painful and harrowing.

One victim gave a graphic account of how, along with other children, she was taken on occasions at night to a wooded area somewhere in West Cornwall, often next to large houses.

Men dressed in black gowns with hoods would appear from the gloom chanting, ordering the children to take their clothes off.

She said on one terrifying occasion she was bound to a chair and blindfolded and feared she would be killed.

The woman said: "They had knives, not like kitchen knives, when I was naked. They were ornamental knives, one had a red gem in the middle."

A High Priestess then ran knives up and down her body and around her neck – she felt hot wax being poured down her stomach.

The victim said: "That is why I thought I was going to die."

Asked to explain what had been done to her, she said she felt like a "rag doll" somebody was experimenting on.

She said one of the men "would dance around and do horrible stuff."

The woman said: "You would have to do what you were told. They would squeeze your neck until you could not breathe and then let you go. It was just like a game to them."

In a videoed police interview played to the court another woman said her abuse involved numerous people. She said attacks began when she was aged six or seven years old. She was taken into a room with four men, she said with Kemp clasping a camera to record her humiliation.

The woman said: "I was abused by people I did not know, there are probably some videos of me out there for people to watch and enjoy. I knew it was wrong but I was too scared to tell."

To keep their victims quiet the perverts plied them with alcohol and paid them with sweets and money to remain silent.

Prussian-born Peter Petrauske was often referred to during the trial as "German Pete." The former restaurateur and taxi driver's defence was simple – that a combination of mistaken identity and a conspiracy had brought him before the courts. The father-of-four said he had been a pagan for 55 years and was high priest of his coven.

Items seized by the police during a raid on his home at The Beacon, Falmouth – where he had an altar in his bedroom – included colourful robes, daggers, a black leather whip, and eye mask and books on witchcraft.

They were, he insisted only ever for ceremonial purposes including weddings, initiating new members and at "Sabbath" rituals.

Regarding the victims from the 1970s onwards he said he did not know them at the time or now and they had mixed him up with someone else. He explained how his photograph appeared in the newspapers when he gave interviews six years ago about the murder of fellow pagan Peter Solheim.

21Sep12 - Friday Drivetime - Investigative journalist Roger Cook uncovers Leeds satanic ring and is then closed down by Murdoch News of the World libel campaign

satanic abuse circle around 'The Sorcerers' Apprentice' shop in Yorkshire run by Chris Bray

Investigative ITV 'The Cook Report' Central TV journalist and author of 'Dangerous Ground' Roger Cook describes how Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World libelled him and got him taken off the air by ITV while he had created the most popular current affairs TV show ever.

Roger describes some of his investigations: the penetration of airport security and hijacking of airliners in the United States before the 9/11 attacks; South Yorkshire police misconduct and the Hillsborough disaster cover-up; availability of weapons grade plutonium & nuclear weapons on the Russian black market; satanic abuse circle around 'The Sorcerers' Apprentice' shop in Yorkshire run by Chris Bray; News International, an organised criminal gang conducting burglaries and not just hacking voicemails but tapping the phones of their legal opponents. How storage company Iron Mountain managed to destroy the film archive of The Cook Report. Appeal for people to put recordings they have of The Cook Report onto YouTube.

http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/63107

Flirting with Hitler

"new possibilities for influencing people are arising in the area of communications networks. In particular, the entertainment industry... has an immense influence that until now has gone unremarked."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,839755,00.html

Gothic is a way of dressing, a taste in music, a style. But in Germany - at the extreme fringes - it has also become the point at which neo-Nazism and Satanism meet

John Hooper

Saturday November 16, 2002

The Guardian

The prosecutor called it "a picture of cruelty and depravity such as I have never, ever seen". He was describing the scene left behind when Daniel and Manuela Ruda fled from their home in the west German town of Witten in July last year after murdering their friend, Frank Hackert. When police broke in three days later, on July 9, they found a poster of hanged women in the bathroom and a collection of human skulls in the living room. There was a coffin in which 23-year-old Manuela sometimes slept. Blood-stained scalpels were scattered around the house. And then there was Hackert's corpse. He had been stabbed 66 times. A scalpel was lodged in his stomach and a pentagram cut into his skin. Nearby was a list of names. Police believe that they were those of the people the couple intended to kill next.

The Rudas' trial in January provided a stream of outlandish and gruesome details. Much of the focus was on Manuela, who shrank from sunlight and had had two of her teeth replaced with animal fangs to look more like a vampire. She said her initiation into the world of Satanism had taken place at a Gothic club in Islington, London, where she claimed to have met real vampires. "We drank the blood of living people," she told police. On January 31, she was sentenced to 13 years in a secure mental facility, while Daniel was sentenced to 15 years.

While public attention tended to dwell on the way in which Manuela had given life to her sinister fantasies, a more chilling aspect of the case went largely unnoticed: the links between the Rudas and the neo-Nazi movement, links that hint at a much broader - and growing - overlap in Germany between the far right and the broad range of occult and esoteric movements that nowadays go by the generic name of "Gothic" or "Dark Wave".

Among the witnesses at the trial was 28-year-old Frank Lewa. He testified that he had first met Daniel Ruda on the local far right/skinhead scene. Daniel's involvement was more than casual. The regional newspaper, the Rheinische Post, discovered that at the 1998 general election campaign in Germany, Daniel had canvassed for the National-Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a far right party that the government has since tried to outlaw (the matter is currently before the Constitutional Court).

On the witness stand, Lewa said that after the election Daniel drifted out of the skinhead world and into the Gothic scene. He began listening to "black metal" music, a variant of heavy metal, and at one time played in a band called the Bloodsucking Freaks. It was through a black metal fanzine, in fact, that he met Manuela, after placing an ad that read: "Black-haired vampire seeks princess of darkness who despises everything and everybody and has bidden farewell to life."

Daniel, 26, broke contact with Lewa after a row at a party. Lewa told the court that he had received a letter from his erstwhile friend in July, a few days before the Rudas killed Hackert. In it, Daniel called Lewa a Judas and enclosed a photograph of himself, covered in blood and apparently hanging from hooks in the ceiling. He was pointing two gas pistols at the camera.

When the police finally caught up with Daniel and his wife, on July 12 2001, they were in the east German city of Jena, having previously visited two nearby towns, Sonderhausen and Apold.

The significance of these details would be lost on most Germans, and it appears not to have been remarked upon at the trial. Nevertheless, it would have meant a very great deal to anyone who had studied what has become known as "the case of Satan's Children", in which three schoolboys who lived near Jena were convicted in 1994 of the ritual black magic killing of a classmate.

One of the boys, 16-year-old Hendrik Möbus from Sonderhausen, formed a band while in a juvenile detention centre. Among the tracks on a CD they produced was one called Zyklon B, after the gas used in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Not long after Möbus's release on probation in 1998, he began violating the terms of his parole, roaring out "Sieg Heil" from among the audience at a concert, and attempting to justify the murder for which he had been sentenced on political grounds. "I don't know whether, in the Nazi era, one would have been convicted if one had rendered race vermin harmless," he was quoted as saying.

Germany has legislation making both Holocaust denial and the use of symbols from the Third Reich criminal offences. In 1999, faced with the prospect of another spell in jail for contravening these laws (and thereby breaking the terms of his parole), Möbus fled to the US, where he applied unsuccessfully for political asylum. He is now back behind bars in Germany. His brother, who lives in Apold, runs a black metal label, Darker Than Black.

In the days that followed the murder of Frank Hackert, the Rudas embarked on a kind of pilgrimage to places that in their minds linked the far right and the occult - to Jena, Sonderhausen and Apold. It is possible they planned to do more than visit: on the death list police discovered in the Rudas' flat was the name of the mother of the boy whom Hendrik Möbus and his friends had murdered seven years earlier.

Links between Nazism and esoteric and occult movements are nothing new. Hitler, rejecting Christianity, embraced instead the paganism of the early Germanic tribes. Their beliefs, both real and imagined, offered a basis on which any number of sinister concepts could be superimposed. The process reached its apogee at Schloss Wewelsburg, near the town of Paderborn. Though the present-day castle dates from the late 16th century, records suggest that there has been a fortress on the site since the days of the Huns, more than a thousand years earlier. The surrounding landscape is wooded, often misty, and interspersed with giant, weirdly-shaped rocks. The castle and its environs were ideally suited to the purpose for which Heinrich Himmler rented them in 1934 - that of providing the officers of his elite corps, the SS, with an education in the supposed pagan mysteries underpinning National Socialism.

Though it does not make much of an impact at election time, the far right remains a disturbing undercurrent in German life: sufficiently disturbing for the federal government to have launched an all-out drive against the neo-Nazi fringe two years ago (including the attempt to ban the NPD). "The problem with the far right in Germany is not that its members are particularly numerous, but that they are readier than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe to resort to violence," said a senior intelligence officer who asked not to be named. That point was driven home by a string of savage attacks in early 2000, culminating in the beating to death of a Mozambique-born German citizen in Dessau.

The far right is especially pervasive in the formerly communist east where unemployment is high and where, after the war, there was not the same painful reckoning with the past as in the west. Despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that there are fewer immigrants in the former GDR, surveys also show that racist attitudes are more prevalent there than in the cosmopolitan west.

One possible reason why the degree of support for the far right does not show up in election results is that the most extreme rightwingers will have nothing to do with the democratic process and abstain. This is particularly true of those connected with the so-called Kameradschaften which form a network of mutually independent, neo-Nazi secret societies. Each may have no more than 10 or 15 members, but around them is a wider circle of associates and sympathisers. Indeed, the secretive and hierarchical world of the German far right mirrors that of many occult communities.

On several occasions since the fall of the Third Reich, evidence has surfaced of connections between the far right and Satanism. As in the cases of Hendrik Möbus and Daniel Ruda, however, they have been limited to individuals or, at most, small groups. But in the past five years, an entirely new phenomenon has developed: a mass youth culture in which neo-Nazi ideas and symbols have merged with the Gothic scene.

This movement can be traced back to 1993, when Roland Bubik, widely regarded as the leading thinker of the German extreme right, wrote a seminal article for the magazine Junge Freiheit. Entitled "Culture as a question of power", it argued that "new possibilities for influencing people are arising in the area of communications networks. In particular, the entertainment industry... has an immense influence that until now has gone unremarked." Within a couple of years, Bubik's partner, Simone Satzger, was stating as fact, in a collection of essays edited by Bubik, that the far right's strategy was "to open up contemporary cultural and political phenomena to use them for our own purposes".

Since the mid-1990s, Germany's neo-Nazis have attempted to penetrate several youth scenes, including techno, but it is with Goths that they have had their greatest success. The Gothic movement may be on the wane in Britain and many other countries around Europe, but in Germany, where its adherents are known as Gruftis (from the German word for "crypt"), they constitute a vast group. It is particularly strong in the former GDR. East Germans are still reeling from the fall of communism, and the young in particular seem to be searching for new values to fill the gap left by a creed that was as much a religion as an ideology.

"The concentration of Goths in Germany is much higher than in other European countries," says Stephan Tschendal, who edits an online Gothic magazine. He estimates that between 5% and 7% of all young Germans between the ages of 12 and 25 are Goths, an overall population of at least 650,000. Many of them are doing no more than making a fashion statement, or registering a protest against the drabness and conformity of modern adult life. Devil-worshippers exist only on the extremist fringe. But in two specific areas of the Gothic scene - the areas in which the neo-Nazis have had the greatest success in infiltrating their ideas - Germany's intelligence officers believe there is genuine cause for concern. One of these is "neo-folk"; the other is black metal, the dark variant of heavy metal that so appealed to Daniel Ruda.

In a darkened hall in the centre of Leipzig, blue lights play on the smoke billowing out from under a stage where Darkwood, a three-piece neo-folk band, play placid, lilting, slightly weird music. The band's gig forms part of an annual, three-day Gothic festival, which this year attracted some 17,000 people from all over Europe to Leipzig. Churches in the city that had been asked to host concerts refused to do so, citing the risk that Satanists could assemble on consecrated ground.

About half the crowd at the gig are typical Goths, but the rest look as if they have wandered in from a Nuremberg rally. There are men wearing high, heavy boots and black military-style shirts and trousers. There are women, also wearing boots, with calf-length skirts and white shirts with a symbol on the right arm that resembles a badge of rank. Everywhere, there are leather cross-straps, forage caps and 1930s-style shorts.

As its name implies, neo-folk draws on the musical heritage of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other protest singers of the 1960s and 1970s. Some German groups dig further back into the past, updating and reworking traditional folk tunes. The acoustic guitar is central to its music, which also features flutes, cellos and violins. Yet neo-folk is anything but folksy. Punk has had an influence on its evolution and much of the music could be described as industrial. Unusually extensive percussion sets are typical of the genre. Another characteristic is that gentle melody-making can all of a sudden give way to something much more visceral: the lead singer of Darkwood seized hold of a pair of heavy drumsticks and beat out an intimidating tattoo on a bass drum. It was like Japanese Kodo drumming, but with the rhythms of a Prussian parade ground. The drumming rose in a crescendo, then ended as abruptly as it had begun, prompting the loudest cheers of the night.

The Leipzig festival was launched in 1991, soon after German reunification, and has helped turn the city into the Gothic capital of Europe. Like neo-Nazis, Goths are drawn to its Volkerschlachtdenkmal, one of the strangest and most intimidating monuments to be found anywhere in Europe. A vast, stepped pyramid towering over a lake on the wooded fringes of the city, it resembles a Mayan temple. The Volkerschlachtdenkmal was inaugurated in 1913 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig 100 years earlier. But since German reunification, it has become a favoured rallying point for the far right.

The pivotal figure on Leipzig's neo-folk scene is a 29-year-old DJ who goes by the name of Mortanius. He denies that neo-folk has anything to do with extreme-right politics. "These groups use language and symbols both from the Nazi era and the days of the GDR to provoke people, to get people to think - think about their past," he told me. "People from the far right scene don't feel comfortable in this environment. We never see skinheads at our gigs or in our clubs. On the contrary, we have problems with them. I won't say you don't see people from the extreme right or that they aren't trying to infiltrate. The attempt is certainly there. But it is doomed to fail because people can think for themselves. We have a generally left-leaning audience."

Less than an hour after meeting Mortanius, I found myself in a shabby room with four Goths, three young men and a woman, who had agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity. One of the men had a partly shaven head and a pigtail, and was wearing a black shirt, camouflage trousers, military boots and a symbol dangling on his chest that managed to combine a Celtic cross, a human skull, an eagle's wings, two entwined snakes and a pentagram. His girlfriend had a spiked collar around her neck and a dog's lead dangling between her breasts. At one point, we fell to discussing what he called "youth Satanism". "It starts with the moving glass and then they go on to animal sacrifice," he said nonchalantly, and apparently knowledgeably.

When I read out Mortanius's description of the local neo-folk scene and its lack of connection to the far right, all four burst into incredulous laughter.

Solveig Prass, the Leipzig social worker who had set up our meeting, asked me if Mortanius had been wearing any badges when I met him; had I noticed that one of them was the so-called "Black Sun"? A pagan fertility symbol, the Black Sun is known to have been used by the Alemans, a third-century Germanic tribe. Each of its 12 "rays" is the rune meaning "sun". According to Dr Rudiger Sunner, author of a recent book on Nazism and its use of myth, the Black Sun is "definitely a sign of the SS". Himmler fashioned the SS emblem from one of the Black Sun's 12 jagged "rays", and a large Black Sun was set into the floor of the Obergruppenführer's Hall in Schloss Wewelsburg, immediately above the crypt.

Mortanius was in fact wearing three badges, including the pagan Black Sun: he argues that "our symbols... don't really have anything to do with the Third Reich".

How close, really, are the links between Gothic - or, specifically, neo-folk - culture and the German far right? Unquestionably, there is an element of sheer, apolitical mischief: it is not easy for the sons and daughters of the generation of 1968 to find a way of shocking their parents, but dressing up in vaguely neo-Nazi garb should do the trick. "I want to stand out from the crowd of normal Dark Wave folk," Mortanius told me. "I don't want to be an ordinary Goth in the street. I want to provoke people."

The organisation charged with protecting Germany from a Nazi revival is the Verfassungsschutz, a body roughly equivalent to Britain's MI5. Reinhard Boos is its director in Saxony, the state in which Leipzig lies, and so has a special interest in gauging the threat posed by far right penetration of the Gothic scene. When I visit him in his office in a leafy Dresden suburb, he produces a couple of CD covers and lays them on his desk. One is an album by the British band Death In June, which shows four dogs' heads arranged at right angles. Half-close your eyes and they become a swastika. The other CD is by the Austrian band Der Blutharsch. Tip it, and a shiny patch on the inside cover becomes a triangle containing the jagged ray of... what? The SS symbol? Or the sun rune? Is this merely provocation, or evidence of a link between extremist politics and neo-folk music?

"I think the truth is in between," says Boos. "The Gothic scene is not to be confused with rightwing extremism. But there are some groups that use symbols which refer to rightwing extremism and they do it mainly for provocation. Very, very few of them do it to support rightwing groups. On the other hand, the rightwing extremists know that there are people who can be useful to them, so some of them try to win them over for their own aims. It is not a plan by a few [people] that is carried out in a clear, structured way. Those who think it is a good idea do so of their own accord."

"Things are not going well for the far right," argues Wolfgang Hund, an educational scientist and the author of several books on the occult. "They are under pressure from all sides and they are looking for allies... They are looking for foot soldiers in the ranks of disoriented youth - human raw material for any Pied Piper who comes along."

One of the young men I met in Leipzig was about as different from the far right stereotype as could be imagined. His jet-black hair was shaved away on one side of his head and hung lank down the other. He was wearing a black velvet tailcoat, a silver pentagram on a chain around his neck, five rings in one ear, and sunglasses. This apparently typical Goth was in the process of trying to free himself from the neo-Nazi scene.

"My first contact was through a member of the NPD," he said. "It was all very low key at first. We went to some concerts [of neo-Nazi bands] and I liked the music they played. Then I started getting flyers and leaflets. Eventually, I began to help distribute them." He decided to leave after a row over money ended in his being badly beaten.

Such cases notwithstanding, Boos believes that recruitment is not, in fact, the far right's primary aim. The threat posed by the infiltration of the Gothic scene is, he believes, subtler. "We take it seriously because it opens people's heads to extreme rightwing thought."

Solveig Prass and her colleagues in Leipzig, who talk regularly to DJs and others, have been keeping a running estimate of how much of the Goth scene is under the influence of the far right."The link was first noticed in the mid-1990s. At that time, it was estimated that the overlap was about 5%. Two years ago, we put it at 7-8%. Now, our estimate is 9%." Alfred Schobert, a lecturer at the Duisberg Institute of Language and Social Research, took a similar view in his 1998 academic investigation into the infiltration of the Gothic scene by the far right. "It is not about recruiting in the short term. It is about [producing] an overall reversal that picks up on and distorts the prevailing mood."

Through the Gothic scene, the far right can obtain access to the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people throughout Europe. If they can be taught to accept certain beliefs and symbols as normal, then the extreme right will have made significant progress towards achieving what Schobert argues is a key, medium-term goal: "The removal of the taboos that attach to Nazi symbols and racist-nationalist ideology".

Additional research by Beate Steinhorst

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,839755,00.html

Lesbian 'vampire' lovers jailed for teen murder

Friday, March 7, 2008

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=112494&in_page_id=34

Stacey Mitchell

Two lesbian lovers, one who drank blood as part of a vampire culture, have been sentenced to life in prison for killing a British teenager they bludgeoned to death with a concrete block.

Jessica Stasinowsky, 21, and Valerie Parashumti, 19, pleaded guilty to murdering 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell in Perth, Western Australia, in 2006 because she was annoying.

Judge Peter Blaxell said the murder was "sexually perverse" and "evil", after the court was told the two lesbian lovers became sexually aroused as they battered the teenage girl and then kissed while standing over her body as she lay dying.

British-born Stacey, who had emigrated to Australia from Dorset, had moved into a house the lovers were sharing.

Stasinowsky immediately hated her because she thought the teenager was flirting with her lover, the court heard.

Parashumti felt the need to prove that Stacey meant nothing to her, so she and Stasinowsky decided to kill her.

On the day of the murder, the trio drank whiskey in the kitchen and Stacey took tablets which made her drowsy.

Parashumti crept up behind Stacey and started hitting her on the head with a concrete slab, while Stasinowsky took off a dog chain belt and began to strangle her.

Stacey took at least 45 minutes to die, but Stasinowsky later told a prison officer she wished it had lasted longer.

The killers made a mobile phone video of the murder scene, laughing and mocking their victim, and then dumped her body upside down in a garbage bin in a back shed.

Parashumti, who drank blood as part of a vampire subculture, was said to have very strong sexual sadistic tendencies and was sexually aroused by physical torture and violence.

According to the Australian Associated Press, Judge Blaxell said when handing down the life sentences: "You have each had more than a year in custody to reflect upon the evilness of your crime, yet you still lack remorse and obviously place no value on the sanctity of human life

"There is also the added problem that you each enjoy being sexually aroused by the infliction of violence.

"Even more appalling are your admissions to the effect that at the time of the murder you were each sexually excited by the violence of the event."

Lesbian 'vampire' lovers jailed for teen murder

28Oct04 - MOD Questions in the house of commons

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/cm041028/text/41028w19.htm#41028w19.html_sbhd7

Mr. Goodman: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what his policy is with regard to the practice of Satanism in the armed forces; and if he will make a statement.

[194205] Mr. Caplin: A person's beliefs are essentially a private matter.

How the devil do you get a Satanist in the Navy?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1327068,00.html

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor October 25, 2004

A ROYAL Navy frigate commander who agreed to let a member of his crew practise Satanism on board the ship yesterday won the full support of the Ministry of Defence.

Captain Russell Best, commanding officer of HMS Cumberland, a Type 22 frigate, officially recognised Leading Hand Chris Cranmer, 24, as a Devil-worshipping member of his complement after full consultation with the ship’s chaplain, the MoD said.

It is the first instance of its kind in the history of the Royal Navy. The naval technician, who has recently returned with his ship from a tour of duty in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, has been allowed to perform Satanic rituals and other acts that conform to the creed of Satanism.

The MoD said that Captain Best was entirely within his rights to concede to his request to be registered as a Satanist. “There is nothing in the Queen’s Regulations that forbids practising Satanism and people are entitled to their own religious beliefs,” it said.

The unmarried naval technician, 24, from Edinburgh, said that being a Satanist gave him “the freedom of religion I wanted. despite its controversial nature.

“I didn’t want to feel I couldn’t get out my Satanic Bible and relax in bed. I didn’t want to bite my tongue any more when dealing with idiots,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

The MoD said that it was an equal opportunities employer and, provided that the Satanism practised on board HMS Cumberland did not “impinge on the operational effectiveness of the crew or its morale in any way”, there was no reason why Captain Best should not have agreed to the request by Leading Hand Cranmer.

However, Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister, said that the decision was “utterly shocking”. “Satanism is wrong,” she said. “Obviously, the private beliefs of individuals anywhere, including the Armed Forces, are their own affair, but I hope it doesn’t spread. God himself gives free will, but I would like to think that if somebody applied to the Navy and said he was a Satanist today it would raise eyebrows somewhat.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1327068,00.html

Occult link to drowned councillor

Friday, 2 July, 2004

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/3859435.stm

Detectives investigating the death of a Cornish parish councillor have confirmed they are looking at possible links with the occult.

They believe 56-year-old Peter Solheim, from Carnkie, was interested in black magic.

Police launched the murder hunt after fishermen recovered Mr Solheim's body five miles off the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, on 18 June.

He was last seen launching his dinghy at Mylor Harbour on 16 June.

A Devon and Cornwall Police spokeswoman said: "We are aware of his interest in the occult and it is one of a number of lines of inquiry we are following up."

The Arch Druid of Cornwall, Ed Prynn, has confirmed to the BBC that Mr Solheim was also a druid.

Mr Prynn said: "He was such a nice guy. We used to talk a lot about boating and fishing.

"He was a wonderful story teller, it's only just sunk in what has happened"

But he said: "I always teach people not to dabble with the occult, the darker side".

Officers questioned more than 200 people at Mylor on Thursday.

Police said the operation led to about a dozen lines of inquiry which merited further investigation.

Members of Cornwall's druid community are expected to be interviewed in connection with Mr Solheim's interests.

Although Mr Solheim drowned, a post-mortem examination revealed a number of "unexplained injuries" on his body.

Police said his small white dinghy - with its key in the ignition - was spotted drifting in Mylor harbour by a local boatman on 17 June.

Police want to hear from a man called Charlie who it is thought Mr Solheim was going to meet at the time of his disappearance.

An examination of Mr Solheim's body revealed he had not been in the water long when he was found.

This and the fact that his 18ft fishing boat, the Izzwizz, was found floating in Carrick Roads led officers to start the murder inquiry.

Police said it was "not feasible" that the body could have floated from Mylor to the spot where it was found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/3859435.stm

Satanist mystery of parish councillor found dead in sea

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1165444,00.html

By Simon de Bruxelles - July 02, 2004

DETECTIVES trying to establish a motive for the murder of a parish councillor found floating in the sea off Cornwall are investigating his links to the occult.

Peter Solheim, 56, a retired printer who collected antique guns, was a member of pagan group which worshipped at Cornwall’s ancient stone circles. Members of the group say that he left them after developing an interest in the occult.

The body of Mr Solheim, a divorced father of three, was recovered by fishermen five miles off the Lizard peninsula on June 18. Police initially believed that he had been the victim of a boating accident because his dinghy had been found drifting in Mylor Harbour three miles away the previous day.

A post-mortem examination found “unexplained” injuries on the body and experts told police that it was not feasible for the two to have drifted so far apart.

Detectives confirmed yesterday that Mr Solheim’s pagan background is one of their lines of inquiry. They are also appealing for information about a man called Charlie who had a boat Mr Solheim had said he planned to use.

Detective Inspector Neil Best, who is leading the investigation, said: “Charlie could be very significant because he may have been the last person to see Mr Solheim alive.” Detective Sergeant John Trott, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said yesterday: “His interest in the occult has been made known to us. It is a line of inquiry that we are now pursuing. His injuries are still unexplained, but at this stage we are unable to go into more detail as it could be crucial to the investigation.”

Mr Solheim’s deepening interest in dark arts alarmed members of his former druid group based at St Merryn who were content to dance around stone circles. They say that he left the group five years ago and began to practise rituals on his own.

One member, who asked not to be named, said: “He started to get involved with satanism and liked to go off and perform rituals on his own. He was always making knives and swords, and he showed them to us. We all became really worried about him.

“Once he tried to perform black magic spells on two other people, and that really upset them. I don’t know what his rituals involved, but he would always do them on his own. Eventually he stopped coming to gatherings.”

Mr Solheim, a member of Budock Parish Council, had been unemployed for the past few years, having been injured in an industrial accident in a printworks. He lived in Carnkie, near Helston, with his new partner. His three adult children also live in the village.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1165444,00.html

35 years on, murders still bedevil Chianti's rolling hills

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1129565,00.html

Respectable professionals accused of belonging to satanist coven that masterminded 16 killings by illiterate farmer

John Hooper in Rome

Friday January 23, 2004

The Guardian

The suspects are outwardly respectable professionals. A lawyer, a retired village chemist, a former university medical professor specialising in dermatology and sexually transmitted diseases. The setting is the rolling hills of Chianti. And their alleged crime is one that could lie at the heart of one of Umberto Eco's esoteric thrillers.

The men are accused of belonging to a satanist coven that masterminded Italy's most notorious serial killings - 16 murders carried out between 1968 and 1985, and blamed on a "Monster of Florence".

Four people have been cautioned as suspects and, on Monday, the home of one of those formally placed under investigation was raided by police at dawn.

Extracts from the search warrant issued were published yesterday by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In it, the prosecutors state that the Monster of Florence murders were the work of a "split-level" conspiracy. The killing was done by an semi-literate farmer, Pietro Pacciani, and two other men who were convicted and sentenced in the late 1990s. "But a group of people who celebrated black masses and magical rites put the weapons into their hands", the warrant added.

The 16 killings have long intrigued amateur detectives. The failure of the police to catch the murderer became, for many, a symbol of the ineffectiveness of the Italian state. After the arrest and indictment of Pacciani, the extraordinary progress of his case was just as emblematic of the vagaries of Italy's snail- paced justice.

Pacciani was found guilty by the Florence assize court in 1994. Two years later, his alleged accomplices were arrested, but the very next day he himself was freed on appeal. His release was then overturned by the supreme court which ordered a retrial. Pacciani died, a free man, in 1998.

All the "Monster" victims were couples, several of whom were making love in a quiet country spot when the killer struck. At an early stage, there was speculation the murders might have a ritual, as well as a sexual, aspect. Eighteen year-old Stefania Pettini, for example, who was found in a parked car at Borgo San Lorenzo, north of Florence, in 1974, was left spread-eagled by the killer with a vine branch protruding from her mutilated vagina.

But, though hints of an occult connection cropped up repeatedly in the tortuous police investigation, none was made to stick. The latest, sensational twist arose from an investigation by police and prosecutors in Perugia into a loan-sharking ring. While listening in on a telephone call made by one of the suspects, investigators heard a borrower told that "If you don't pay up, you'll end up like the doctor on [Lake] Trasimeno". This could only be a reference to Francesco Narducci, a 36- year-old doctor whose dead body was found floating on the lake in 1985.

His death had not been treated as murder but his body was recently exhumed and examined by pathologists. His family's lawyer said last night that they had found no signs of violence. However, according to reports in the Italian media yesterday, police have found evidence that he had dabbled in the occult and had come into contact with a number of people whose names had cropped up on the margins of the investigation.

They now believe Dr Narducci was the 17th victim of the Chianti killers - that he was murdered and dumped in the lake to prevent him from revealing the group's chilling secrets. The police findings have been incorporated into a separate probe of the killings being carried out by a 13-strong squad of officers based in Florence.

It is now known that two earlier, independent investigations also pointed to a satanist link. One was carried out by a French private detective who was called in to investigate the deaths of the "Monster's" last victims, Nadine Mauriot and Jean Kaveichvili. He concluded that they had travelled to Italy to take part in satanic rituals.

The other investigation was carried out by the civil arm of the Italian secret services. It was finished in 1985, but for reasons that have never been made clear it was not given to either the police or the courts and only came to light two years ago. This report too concluded the killings had a strong ritual, occult element.

Monday's raid was on the home of a retired chemist in San Casciano, where prosecutors believe the coven was based. According to reports yesterday, police spent 12 hours at the house and left with 10 large boxes full of documents, address books and pornographic videos.

The 60-year-old suspect sold his business and retired five years ago to devote himself to painting. His lawyer, Gabriele Zanobini, said: "I have yet to see the [court] papers, but I have known my client for 10 years [and] I am certain that he has nothing to do with this business."

San Casciano's parish priest, Father Renzo Polidori, was quoted by Corriere della Sera as saying the suspect had had an unhappy private life. His son had got involved with drugs and he was separated from his wife. Father Renzo said the man had donated one of his works of art to the church. They were, he said, "strange, dark drawings, full of suffering".

17 years of terror

• August 21 1968: The killers strike for the first time, murdering Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco, in a cul de sac near a cemetery on the night of a new moon. Locci's young son, who was in the car in which his mother was killed, is found later on a farmer's doorstep, having been left there by murderer.
• September 14 1974 Stefania Pettini and Pasquale Gentilcore are murdered in a gun and knife attack.
• June 6 1981 Carmela Di Nuccio and Giovanni Foggi, the third double murder in which the female victim has her genitals cut out.
• September 22 1981 Stefano Baldi and Susanna Campi. Once again the murdered woman is sexually mutilated.
• June 19 1982 Antonella Migliorini and Paolo Mainardi. Unlike the others, they realise they are about to be attacked and try to flee in their car, but in vain.
• September 9 1983 The first foreign victims, German tourists Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Uwe Rusch Sens. Their bodies are found in a camper van.
• June 29 1984 Claudio Stefanacci and Pia Rontini. This time the murderer not only cuts out the genitals of his female victim but cuts off her left breast in what becomes a hallmark of the Monster's savagery.
• September 8 1985 The last killings, of two French visitors, Nadine Mauriot and her husband, Jean Michel Kraveicvili. Ms Mauriot is also mutilated after she is killed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1129565,00.html

Haiti makes voodoo official

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2985627.stm

30Apr03 - BBC

Voodoo has been practised in Haiti since the late 18th Century, but only now has it been recognised as a religion on a par with others worshipped in the country.

Haiti's Catholic President, Jean- Bertrand Aristide, took the decision earlier in April which means that voodoo ceremonies such as marriages now have equal standing with Catholic ones.

The mixture of gods and goddesses and Catholic saints is an integral part of Haitian life - one common saying is that Haitians are 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% voodoo.

"We've always been the majority religion in Haiti - it's never been illegal to be a voodooisant," said Mambu Racine Sumbu, an American voodoo priestess who has been practising in Haiti for 15 years.

She told the BBC World Service's Reporting Religion programme: "What President Aristide has done for us, for which we are very thankful, is to facilitate us in obtaining the status that we need to perform legally-binding religious ceremonies."

'Great beauty'

Haitian voodoo acquired a poor reputation internationally during the dictatorships of the voodoo physician, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc".

US Presidents John F Kennedy - whose assassination Papa Doc claimed "credit" for following the placing of a voodoo curse upon him - and Jimmy Carter condemned the regimes for using voodoo to repress their people.

But Priestess Sumbu said that proper use of voodoo had little to do with such oppression.

"Much of the image that people have of Haiti is based on anti- voodoo propaganda," she said.

"Our religion is a religion of great power and beauty.

"What President Aristide's decree has done for us is to give us the same legal status as other religions in Haiti, but we have always been the majority religion - over 90% of Haitians are voodooisant.

"So now we're hoping to obtain something to allow us to set up our own schools, our own hospitals and so forth.

"This is the first step."

'Hollywood view'

Leslie Griffiths, one time head of the British Methodist Church and a renowned expert on Haiti, said he also welcomed the decision.

"Voodoo is part of the air that Haitians breathe," he said.

"Contrary to what Western believers might think, it's not all that bad.

"There are excesses that are committed in the name of voodoo that everybody - including some voodoo worshippers - would take some position against.

"But on the whole, it's not at all unusual for people to be both in the world of voodoo and in the world of Roman Catholicism."

And he attacked the stereotypical view of voodoo as a sort of black magic cult.

"Frankly this Hollywood view is one of the first things people need to disabuse themselves of," he said.

"Ninety-five percent of voodoo is simply the invoking of spirits to help people survive what is sometimes a very difficult life, and sometimes to ease and placate what is a very distant God.

"I believe that the mystique of voodoo has existed because it isn't official.

"Now it has been given an official position, how much will they contribute? What social attitudes will develop?"

Over 90% of Haitians are said to practice voodoo

Ninety-five percent of voodoo is simply the invoking of spirits to help people survive what is sometimes a very difficult life Voodoo expert Leslie Griffiths

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2985627.stm

HUNTING THE VOODOO KILLERS

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12718075&method=full&siteid=50143

Mar 10 2003

Mirror joins Thames torso team investigating African link By Jeff Edwards in Oshogbo, Nigeria

THE monkey's shrivelled, grinning death mask stares up from a stinking cardboard box.

Next to it is the rotting carcass of an eagle wrapped in yellowing newspapers and the decomposing skull of a cheetah cub.

Three thousand miles from London, in 100 degrees of African heat, this sickening "ju-ju market" is just one of the horrors unfolding before a British police team hunting the black-magic killers of a little boy whose mutilated body was found in the Thames.

Naked but for a pair of orange shorts, his head, arms and legs severed from his torso, the victim - named Adam by detectives - had every drop of blood drained from his body.

Now the search for his sacrificial killers has led a Scotland Yard team to the West African country of Nigeria in what officers describe as probably the most "ambitious and unusual" investigation the Yard has undertaken. The Daily Mirror was the only newspaper invited to travel with the police team. Daily it is forced to pit modern, scientific methods and old-fashioned police legwork against the dark rituals of witchcraft, voodoo and ju-ju that are still practised in this superstition-shrouded corner of the world.

Somewhere in these villages, buried in deep jungle and linked by pot-holed roads, are Adam's parents, his sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles who may know something that could lead to his murderer. COMMANDER Andy Baker of the murder squad says: "All we know for sure is that Adam was the victim of a witchcraft-type ritual killing.

"He had not been in Britain very long because scientific analysis of his stomach contents shows that he had been eating British food only for a week or two. We are certain he spent the first few years of his life in Nigeria. "In this country there is a tradition of human sacrifice and child abduction. We think Adam was taken from here but killed in London by a high priest of black magic or voodoo.

"By analysing the chemical contents of his bones, scientists deduced he can come only from one tiny corner of the world.The water he drank and the food he ate have left indelible signs in his bones and tissue. It gives you a narrow belt of territory between two Nigerian cities, Ibadan and Benin City. "We have DNA samples from him and we can cross-match that against people who we think may be his relatives.When we know who he is, we have a good chance of finding out why he was killed and when we know that, we have an even better chance of discovering who did it."

But Nigeria is a dangerous place. A dead man is lying by a road and must have been there for several days. As the police convoy sweeps by, the Scotland Yard men can see how the African sun has already flayed the skin from his naked back. Buzzards and black kites wheel and swoop, waiting their chance. The armed column of jeeps and 4x4s speeds on without slowing - the team travels nowhere without at least six local officers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Millions of Nigerians live in fear of the curse of "bad ju-ju". You can invoke ju-ju in many ways. You can use parts taken from jungle animals, monkeys, snakes, lizards and birds to brew foul concoctions to improve your life, or heap misery on the lives of others.

There are spells to make you rich, to make you a better lover, to give you good health. There are spells to ward off evil spirits cast on you by enemies. Detective Inspector Will O'Reilly says: "There is still a widespread belief in the supernatural and the power of evil spirits, especially in the country areas. The local police tell me that a common practice is for voodoo priests to take body parts from people who have recently died, often by raiding cemeteries, and to sell them to gullible clients in the belief that they have been taken from human sacrifices."

But for the most powerful ju-ju, the only sacrifice acceptable is the human kind and Nigerian police officers admit that many children are abducted to die this way.

Politicians in Nigeria are keen to play things down. When the Scotland Yard men go to see the country's most powerful tribal chief, Oba Ikanude, the Ooni of Ife, he also appears sceptical.

At his cinder-block and corrugated iron palace in the town of Oshogbo, the elderly head of the Yoruba tribe, who sports a £20,000 diamond-inlaid Rolex watch and owns a £4million house in London's Belgravia, says: "It used to happen occasionally but that was all a long time ago." But local police chief Alhaji Shehu Bayero, tells a different story. "A few months ago, I investigated the ritual murder of a young woman.

"The killer was impotent. He was told by a witch-doctor that if he killed a woman and ate part of her insides, he would be able to have sex.

HE SAW a woman walking near his farm, stabbed her to death, cut out part of her intestines, cooked them and ate them.

"Now he is in jail. I think he was a crazy man but he was a believer in the power of ju-ju."

The British team have learned that in ju-ju, parts of a victim's body have different powers.

To eat the brains means you will be endowed with more knowledge. Eating an eye gives the power to see the future. The heart and blood give you strength and power. Devouring a woman's genitals or breasts guarantees you will raise many children. To take the eyelids or eyelashes gives a priest unassailable power to summon evil spirits. Ju-ju does not always involve cannibalism. A human hand buried outside a shop will "beckon" more customers and boost business.

In Oshogbo, the Osun river - which winds through a belt of tropical rainforest - is said to be a traditional site for sacrifices to the water god who bears the same name as the Osun.

Detective Constable Barry Costello says: "We believe that Adam was killed to appease the water god Osun. That is why his body was put into the Thames. "His killers put a pair of orange shorts on his torso. It is traditional that in a sacrifice to Osun, the victim's remains must be dressed in an orange garment before being committed to water."

In a tiny alley at the rear of a maze of shacks, we find stalls selling dried monkey paws, lizards and weasels impaled on sticks, animal skulls, bunches of bird feathers and dried bats. Their prices range from 50p for a dead bat to £5 for a monkey's head. In the heat, the stench is overpowering.

In the villages around Ibadan, Andy Baker and his team have been getting down to the sort of police work they hope will lead them to Adam's killer.

They are distributing hundreds of posters in English and local dialects asking for information about the boy.

They visit schools and police stations offering a reward of 500,000 Nigerian Naira - about £2,500.

This will be paid for any information that leads them to anyone who may be a relative of Adam.

Anyone who claims family links will be DNA-tested and the samples flown back to Britain for comparisons with Adam's DNA. The results should be known in less than a week.

A £50,000 reward is also on offer in Britain and Nigeria for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his killers.

Detectives will spend the next month on house-to-house inquiries in 1,000 Nigerian villages.

OFFICERS have already been told about a child who went missing from a village in Oyo state at the relevant time.

They also plan to question again a 31-year-old Nigerian woman arrested in Glasgow last year as a suspect.

Joyce Asaguede, whose daughters aged six and seven were in care, was held after she rang Strathclyde social services and allegedly told them she wanted her daughters back "so she could sacrifice them".

Clothes in her flat came from the same store in Germany as the shorts Adam was wearing. Friends allege she was part of a sect that believed in human sacrifice.

Police at first thought she was a relative of the dead boy but a DNA test eliminated her. She denied knowledge of the murder.

Mrs Asaguede was later deported after making a bogus asylum application. She has settled in Benin City, in the heart of the region where the team is concentrating investigations.

D.I. O'Reilly says: "We still think she knows something about this case, even if she was not directly involved."

Mr Baker says: "We know this investigation is an enormous task but a little boy has been murdered in shocking circumstances.

"We owe it to him and his parents, who may not even know that harm has befallen him, to do everything we can to get to the bottom of this. We are committed to tracking down his killers and bringing them to justice."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12718075&method=full&siteid=50143

Mum eaten by her son

The Sun (UK), Friday January 10th, page 27

A cannibal who ate his mother's heart after stabbing her to death has been jailed for 30 years. Devil worshipper Joey Cala. 41, killed Lydia, 76, in a sacrifice to satan.

Cops called to a house in Texas by neighbours saw him standing naked over her mutilated body taking bites from her ripped out heart.

SATANIST GUILTY OF TWO KILLINGS

Tuesday 7th January 2003

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12463209&method=full&siteid=50143

A DEVIL worshipper was convicted yesterday of killing two of her lovers with drugs overdoses.

Kathleen McCluskey, 42, shouted: "This is ****ing ignorance" as the guilty verdict was passed.

The jury heard she kept a statue of the devil in her living room and encouraged visitors to stroke it. She told her first husband she was a witch.

Widow McCluskey, from Cambridge, killed artist Mohammed Assadi, 47, with an overdose of liquid methadone during a sex party, the court heard, Less than a year later, she killed care worker Marvin Brodie, 32, with the same drug.

McCluskey was cleared of murdering her second husband James McCluskey, 44, and Raymond Diaz, 48, because of insufficient evidence.

She was found guilty of the manslaughter of Mr Brodie and Mr Assadi but cleared of their murder.

Sentence was adjourned for six weeks by Norwich crown court for psychiatric reports.

Torso case woman is deported

Sunday, 8 December, 2002, 13:31 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2555785.stm

A woman arrested by police investigating the discovery of a boy's torso in London has been deported.

The 31-year-old woman, who lived in Glasgow and is believed to be an important witness, was deported to Nigeria two weeks ago.

But Scotland Yard has denied reports that detectives were angry at the Home Office for removing the woman while their investigations continue.

Police have also confirmed they have arrested a 29-year-old man in east London in connection with the murder of the boy officers have named Adam.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We understand that the woman has now been deported from the UK.

"However inquiries into Adam's murder continue.

"There is no rift between the immigration department and our detectives.

"There has been full co-operation between the service and the investigating detectives."

Adam's torso was found in the River Thames near Tower Bridge in September 2001.

He is believed to have been the victim of a voodoo-style killing or a "muti" murder, a ritual commonly associated with South Africa.

The police investigation has involved consultation with an expert on African ritual practices and a public appeal by former South African President Nelson Mandela

A 29-year-old man was arrested on 27 November in connection with the case and has been bailed until January 2003.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2555785.stm

Flirting with Hitler

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,839755,00.html

Gothic is a way of dressing, a taste in music, a style. But in Germany - at the extreme fringes - it has also become the point at which neo-Nazism and Satanism meet

John Hooper

Saturday November 16, 2002

The Guardian

The prosecutor called it "a picture of cruelty and depravity such as I have never, ever seen". He was describing the scene left behind when Daniel and Manuela Ruda fled from their home in the west German town of Witten in July last year after murdering their friend, Frank Hackert. When police broke in three days later, on July 9, they found a poster of hanged women in the bathroom and a collection of human skulls in the living room. There was a coffin in which 23-year-old Manuela sometimes slept. Blood-stained scalpels were scattered around the house. And then there was Hackert's corpse. He had been stabbed 66 times. A scalpel was lodged in his stomach and a pentagram cut into his skin. Nearby was a list of names. Police believe that they were those of the people the couple intended to kill next.

The Rudas' trial in January provided a stream of outlandish and gruesome details. Much of the focus was on Manuela, who shrank from sunlight and had had two of her teeth replaced with animal fangs to look more like a vampire. She said her initiation into the world of Satanism had taken place at a Gothic club in Islington, London, where she claimed to have met real vampires. "We drank the blood of living people," she told police. On January 31, she was sentenced to 13 years in a secure mental facility, while Daniel was sentenced to 15 years.

While public attention tended to dwell on the way in which Manuela had given life to her sinister fantasies, a more chilling aspect of the case went largely unnoticed: the links between the Rudas and the neo-Nazi movement, links that hint at a much broader - and growing - overlap in Germany between the far right and the broad range of occult and esoteric movements that nowadays go by the generic name of "Gothic" or "Dark Wave".

Among the witnesses at the trial was 28-year-old Frank Lewa. He testified that he had first met Daniel Ruda on the local far right/skinhead scene. Daniel's involvement was more than casual. The regional newspaper, the Rheinische Post, discovered that at the 1998 general election campaign in Germany, Daniel had canvassed for the National-Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a far right party that the government has since tried to outlaw (the matter is currently before the Constitutional Court).

On the witness stand, Lewa said that after the election Daniel drifted out of the skinhead world and into the Gothic scene. He began listening to "black metal" music, a variant of heavy metal, and at one time played in a band called the Bloodsucking Freaks. It was through a black metal fanzine, in fact, that he met Manuela, after placing an ad that read: "Black-haired vampire seeks princess of darkness who despises everything and everybody and has bidden farewell to life."

Daniel, 26, broke contact with Lewa after a row at a party. Lewa told the court that he had received a letter from his erstwhile friend in July, a few days before the Rudas killed Hackert. In it, Daniel called Lewa a Judas and enclosed a photograph of himself, covered in blood and apparently hanging from hooks in the ceiling. He was pointing two gas pistols at the camera.

When the police finally caught up with Daniel and his wife, on July 12 2001, they were in the east German city of Jena, having previously visited two nearby towns, Sonderhausen and Apold.

The significance of these details would be lost on most Germans, and it appears not to have been remarked upon at the trial. Nevertheless, it would have meant a very great deal to anyone who had studied what has become known as "the case of Satan's Children", in which three schoolboys who lived near Jena were convicted in 1994 of the ritual black magic killing of a classmate.

One of the boys, 16-year-old Hendrik Möbus from Sonderhausen, formed a band while in a juvenile detention centre. Among the tracks on a CD they produced was one called Zyklon B, after the gas used in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Not long after Möbus's release on probation in 1998, he began violating the terms of his parole, roaring out "Sieg Heil" from among the audience at a concert, and attempting to justify the murder for which he had been sentenced on political grounds. "I don't know whether, in the Nazi era, one would have been convicted if one had rendered race vermin harmless," he was quoted as saying.

Germany has legislation making both Holocaust denial and the use of symbols from the Third Reich criminal offences. In 1999, faced with the prospect of another spell in jail for contravening these laws (and thereby breaking the terms of his parole), Möbus fled to the US, where he applied unsuccessfully for political asylum. He is now back behind bars in Germany. His brother, who lives in Apold, runs a black metal label, Darker Than Black.

In the days that followed the murder of Frank Hackert, the Rudas embarked on a kind of pilgrimage to places that in their minds linked the far right and the occult - to Jena, Sonderhausen and Apold. It is possible they planned to do more than visit: on the death list police discovered in the Rudas' flat was the name of the mother of the boy whom Hendrik Möbus and his friends had murdered seven years earlier.

Links between Nazism and esoteric and occult movements are nothing new. Hitler, rejecting Christianity, embraced instead the paganism of the early Germanic tribes. Their beliefs, both real and imagined, offered a basis on which any number of sinister concepts could be superimposed. The process reached its apogee at Schloss Wewelsburg, near the town of Paderborn. Though the present-day castle dates from the late 16th century, records suggest that there has been a fortress on the site since the days of the Huns, more than a thousand years earlier. The surrounding landscape is wooded, often misty, and interspersed with giant, weirdly-shaped rocks. The castle and its environs were ideally suited to the purpose for which Heinrich Himmler rented them in 1934 - that of providing the officers of his elite corps, the SS, with an education in the supposed pagan mysteries underpinning National Socialism.

Though it does not make much of an impact at election time, the far right remains a disturbing undercurrent in German life: sufficiently disturbing for the federal government to have launched an all-out drive against the neo-Nazi fringe two years ago (including the attempt to ban the NPD). "The problem with the far right in Germany is not that its members are particularly numerous, but that they are readier than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe to resort to violence," said a senior intelligence officer who asked not to be named. That point was driven home by a string of savage attacks in early 2000, culminating in the beating to death of a Mozambique-born German citizen in Dessau.

The far right is especially pervasive in the formerly communist east where unemployment is high and where, after the war, there was not the same painful reckoning with the past as in the west. Despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that there are fewer immigrants in the former GDR, surveys also show that racist attitudes are more prevalent there than in the cosmopolitan west.

One possible reason why the degree of support for the far right does not show up in election results is that the most extreme rightwingers will have nothing to do with the democratic process and abstain. This is particularly true of those connected with the so-called Kameradschaften which form a network of mutually independent, neo-Nazi secret societies. Each may have no more than 10 or 15 members, but around them is a wider circle of associates and sympathisers. Indeed, the secretive and hierarchical world of the German far right mirrors that of many occult communities.

On several occasions since the fall of the Third Reich, evidence has surfaced of connections between the far right and Satanism. As in the cases of Hendrik Möbus and Daniel Ruda, however, they have been limited to individuals or, at most, small groups. But in the past five years, an entirely new phenomenon has developed: a mass youth culture in which neo-Nazi ideas and symbols have merged with the Gothic scene.

This movement can be traced back to 1993, when Roland Bubik, widely regarded as the leading thinker of the German extreme right, wrote a seminal article for the magazine Junge Freiheit. Entitled "Culture as a question of power", it argued that "new possibilities for influencing people are arising in the area of communications networks. In particular, the entertainment industry... has an immense influence that until now has gone unremarked." Within a couple of years, Bubik's partner, Simone Satzger, was stating as fact, in a collection of essays edited by Bubik, that the far right's strategy was "to open up contemporary cultural and political phenomena to use them for our own purposes".

Since the mid-1990s, Germany's neo-Nazis have attempted to penetrate several youth scenes, including techno, but it is with Goths that they have had their greatest success. The Gothic movement may be on the wane in Britain and many other countries around Europe, but in Germany, where its adherents are known as Gruftis (from the German word for "crypt"), they constitute a vast group. It is particularly strong in the former GDR. East Germans are still reeling from the fall of communism, and the young in particular seem to be searching for new values to fill the gap left by a creed that was as much a religion as an ideology.

"The concentration of Goths in Germany is much higher than in other European countries," says Stephan Tschendal, who edits an online Gothic magazine. He estimates that between 5% and 7% of all young Germans between the ages of 12 and 25 are Goths, an overall population of at least 650,000. Many of them are doing no more than making a fashion statement, or registering a protest against the drabness and conformity of modern adult life. Devil-worshippers exist only on the extremist fringe. But in two specific areas of the Gothic scene - the areas in which the neo-Nazis have had the greatest success in infiltrating their ideas - Germany's intelligence officers believe there is genuine cause for concern. One of these is "neo-folk"; the other is black metal, the dark variant of heavy metal that so appealed to Daniel Ruda.

In a darkened hall in the centre of Leipzig, blue lights play on the smoke billowing out from under a stage where Darkwood, a three-piece neo-folk band, play placid, lilting, slightly weird music. The band's gig forms part of an annual, three-day Gothic festival, which this year attracted some 17,000 people from all over Europe to Leipzig. Churches in the city that had been asked to host concerts refused to do so, citing the risk that Satanists could assemble on consecrated ground.

About half the crowd at the gig are typical Goths, but the rest look as if they have wandered in from a Nuremberg rally. There are men wearing high, heavy boots and black military-style shirts and trousers. There are women, also wearing boots, with calf-length skirts and white shirts with a symbol on the right arm that resembles a badge of rank. Everywhere, there are leather cross-straps, forage caps and 1930s-style shorts.

As its name implies, neo-folk draws on the musical heritage of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other protest singers of the 1960s and 1970s. Some German groups dig further back into the past, updating and reworking traditional folk tunes. The acoustic guitar is central to its music, which also features flutes, cellos and violins. Yet neo-folk is anything but folksy. Punk has had an influence on its evolution and much of the music could be described as industrial. Unusually extensive percussion sets are typical of the genre. Another characteristic is that gentle melody-making can all of a sudden give way to something much more visceral: the lead singer of Darkwood seized hold of a pair of heavy drumsticks and beat out an intimidating tattoo on a bass drum. It was like Japanese Kodo drumming, but with the rhythms of a Prussian parade ground. The drumming rose in a crescendo, then ended as abruptly as it had begun, prompting the loudest cheers of the night.

The Leipzig festival was launched in 1991, soon after German reunification, and has helped turn the city into the Gothic capital of Europe. Like neo-Nazis, Goths are drawn to its Volkerschlachtdenkmal, one of the strangest and most intimidating monuments to be found anywhere in Europe. A vast, stepped pyramid towering over a lake on the wooded fringes of the city, it resembles a Mayan temple. The Volkerschlachtdenkmal was inaugurated in 1913 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig 100 years earlier. But since German reunification, it has become a favoured rallying point for the far right.

The pivotal figure on Leipzig's neo-folk scene is a 29-year-old DJ who goes by the name of Mortanius. He denies that neo-folk has anything to do with extreme-right politics. "These groups use language and symbols both from the Nazi era and the days of the GDR to provoke people, to get people to think - think about their past," he told me. "People from the far right scene don't feel comfortable in this environment. We never see skinheads at our gigs or in our clubs. On the contrary, we have problems with them. I won't say you don't see people from the extreme right or that they aren't trying to infiltrate. The attempt is certainly there. But it is doomed to fail because people can think for themselves. We have a generally left-leaning audience."

Less than an hour after meeting Mortanius, I found myself in a shabby room with four Goths, three young men and a woman, who had agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity. One of the men had a partly shaven head and a pigtail, and was wearing a black shirt, camouflage trousers, military boots and a symbol dangling on his chest that managed to combine a Celtic cross, a human skull, an eagle's wings, two entwined snakes and a pentagram. His girlfriend had a spiked collar around her neck and a dog's lead dangling between her breasts. At one point, we fell to discussing what he called "youth Satanism". "It starts with the moving glass and then they go on to animal sacrifice," he said nonchalantly, and apparently knowledgeably.

When I read out Mortanius's description of the local neo-folk scene and its lack of connection to the far right, all four burst into incredulous laughter.

Solveig Prass, the Leipzig social worker who had set up our meeting, asked me if Mortanius had been wearing any badges when I met him; had I noticed that one of them was the so-called "Black Sun"? A pagan fertility symbol, the Black Sun is known to have been used by the Alemans, a third-century Germanic tribe. Each of its 12 "rays" is the rune meaning "sun". According to Dr Rudiger Sunner, author of a recent book on Nazism and its use of myth, the Black Sun is "definitely a sign of the SS". Himmler fashioned the SS emblem from one of the Black Sun's 12 jagged "rays", and a large Black Sun was set into the floor of the Obergruppenführer's Hall in Schloss Wewelsburg, immediately above the crypt.

Mortanius was in fact wearing three badges, including the pagan Black Sun: he argues that "our symbols... don't really have anything to do with the Third Reich".

How close, really, are the links between Gothic - or, specifically, neo-folk - culture and the German far right? Unquestionably, there is an element of sheer, apolitical mischief: it is not easy for the sons and daughters of the generation of 1968 to find a way of shocking their parents, but dressing up in vaguely neo-Nazi garb should do the trick. "I want to stand out from the crowd of normal Dark Wave folk," Mortanius told me. "I don't want to be an ordinary Goth in the street. I want to provoke people."

The organisation charged with protecting Germany from a Nazi revival is the Verfassungsschutz, a body roughly equivalent to Britain's MI5. Reinhard Boos is its director in Saxony, the state in which Leipzig lies, and so has a special interest in gauging the threat posed by far right penetration of the Gothic scene. When I visit him in his office in a leafy Dresden suburb, he produces a couple of CD covers and lays them on his desk. One is an album by the British band Death In June, which shows four dogs' heads arranged at right angles. Half-close your eyes and they become a swastika. The other CD is by the Austrian band Der Blutharsch. Tip it, and a shiny patch on the inside cover becomes a triangle containing the jagged ray of... what? The SS symbol? Or the sun rune? Is this merely provocation, or evidence of a link between extremist politics and neo-folk music?

"I think the truth is in between," says Boos. "The Gothic scene is not to be confused with rightwing extremism. But there are some groups that use symbols which refer to rightwing extremism and they do it mainly for provocation. Very, very few of them do it to support rightwing groups. On the other hand, the rightwing extremists know that there are people who can be useful to them, so some of them try to win them over for their own aims. It is not a plan by a few [people] that is carried out in a clear, structured way. Those who think it is a good idea do so of their own accord."

"Things are not going well for the far right," argues Wolfgang Hund, an educational scientist and the author of several books on the occult. "They are under pressure from all sides and they are looking for allies... They are looking for foot soldiers in the ranks of disoriented youth - human raw material for any Pied Piper who comes along."

One of the young men I met in Leipzig was about as different from the far right stereotype as could be imagined. His jet-black hair was shaved away on one side of his head and hung lank down the other. He was wearing a black velvet tailcoat, a silver pentagram on a chain around his neck, five rings in one ear, and sunglasses. This apparently typical Goth was in the process of trying to free himself from the neo-Nazi scene.

"My first contact was through a member of the NPD," he said. "It was all very low key at first. We went to some concerts [of neo-Nazi bands] and I liked the music they played. Then I started getting flyers and leaflets. Eventually, I began to help distribute them." He decided to leave after a row over money ended in his being badly beaten.

Such cases notwithstanding, Boos believes that recruitment is not, in fact, the far right's primary aim. The threat posed by the infiltration of the Gothic scene is, he believes, subtler. "We take it seriously because it opens people's heads to extreme rightwing thought."

Solveig Prass and her colleagues in Leipzig, who talk regularly to DJs and others, have been keeping a running estimate of how much of the Goth scene is under the influence of the far right."The link was first noticed in the mid-1990s. At that time, it was estimated that the overlap was about 5%. Two years ago, we put it at 7-8%. Now, our estimate is 9%." Alfred Schobert, a lecturer at the Duisberg Institute of Language and Social Research, took a similar view in his 1998 academic investigation into the infiltration of the Gothic scene by the far right. "It is not about recruiting in the short term. It is about [producing] an overall reversal that picks up on and distorts the prevailing mood."

Through the Gothic scene, the far right can obtain access to the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people throughout Europe. If they can be taught to accept certain beliefs and symbols as normal, then the extreme right will have made significant progress towards achieving what Schobert argues is a key, medium-term goal: "The removal of the taboos that attach to Nazi symbols and racist-nationalist ideology".

· Additional research by Beate Steinhorst

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,839755,00.html

Satanism on the Move in Russia

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/30/37489.html

18:36 30 September 2002

Rock music is evil, according to Father Anatoly

Celibate Priest Anatoly Berestov believes that Satanism has a tendency for development nowadays. Celibate Priest Anatoly is a Doctor of Medical Sciences. He chairs a center for the rehabilitation of people who have suffered from totalitarian sects and occults.

Father Anatoly gave an interview to the website Credo.Ru. In the interview, Father Anatoly said that the situation with drug addicts has improved and has become more stable. In his opinion, this is because of the huge educational effort. This work is conducted both by the Russian Orthodox Church and the media.

However, the situation with occultism is absolutely different. “Satanism has a tendency for growing, and this tendency is a very threatening one,” said Father Anatoly. “Satanism is closely connected with people’s lifestyles. We are now looking at the West, at the USA, and this trash basically comes from there.”

Rock music, which is very popular in Russia now, also originates from the West. From time to time, rock bands get together for a grand show under such slogans as “No Drugs,” “Rock Against Drugs,” and the like. However, Father Anatoly believes that this is open propaganda for drugs: “As a doctor, and as a priest, I am certain that rock music is a straight road to drug addiction. Those people who organize those shows do not actually realize that. Probably, they don't realize this on purpose.”

The news agency New Region has recently reported with reference to the Orthodox Newspaper that there were satanic symbols found on one of the graves at a cemetery in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg. There was a large piece of paper found on one of the graves. The paper was fixed to the grave with nails. There was a pentagram on the paper and other satanic symbols as well. The paper was surrounded with burnt candles and small, painted stones.

Father Vladimir from the Ekaterinburg eparchy hopes that law-enforcement bodies will not ignore such satanic vestiges in the center of the city. Needless to mention, the police will not be able to suppress this; the problem is much larger. Father Anatoly is sure that Satanism is strictly connected with a person's lifestyle and with the aggressive mass culture that has poured into Russia from the West since the beginning of the 1990s.

Like they say in Russia, a holy place is never vacant. One has to think of a way to fill the spiritual gap that was formed after the crash of the communist ideology of the USSR. This gap is very good for various fake missionaries of Satanism. However, needless to mention, this fight cannot be won without the support of the state and law-enforcement bodies.

Pyotr Bely

PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

'Vampire boy' asked officer to bite him

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2134693.stm

Wednesday, 17 July, 2002, 19:17 GMT 20:17 UK

A teenage vampire fanatic accused of killing a pensioner and drinking her blood was arrested two months earlier when he asked a policeman to bite his neck, a court has heard.

The art student, 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies stabbing Mabel Leyshon, 90, with a knife 22 times and removing her heart in a "macabre" killing at her Llanfairpwll, Anglesey, bungalow on 24 November.

But Sergeant Peter Nicholson said he made no connection between the case and his arrest on 23 September, when the boy told him: "Bite my neck."

The boy was arrested for earlier begging a local student to bite him, helping his quest to transform into a vampire.

Tuesday, Mold Crown Court heard pensioner Mrs Leyshon died from multiple stabbed wounds and her chest had been "ripped open".

Pokers were found at her feet in the shape of a cross, the jury was told.

Her heart had been removed, wrapped in newspaper and placed in a saucepan on of a silver platter next to her body after blood had been drunk from it in a "macabre ritual", it was said.

'Bite my neck'

Prosecuting, Roger Thomas QC, said DNA found in the blood at the scene matched that of the defendant.

He claimed the student was "obsessed" by vampires, with vampire books and magazines found at his home and traces of vampire websites identified on his home computer.

Wednesday, sitting instead at Chester, jurors heard from the police officer who arrested the teenager in September, two months before the murder.

The student had visited the lodgings of a German exchange student, 16 - met through a Chinese friend, 18 - who shared the accommodation.

He chatted with the girl for two hours before accusing her of being a vampire and begging her to transform him by biting his neck, it was claimed.

When she refused, he allegedly became violent and had to be dragged away by his friend and the lodgings' landlady, who called police after he punched himself on the nose and asked the pair to smell his blood. Llangefni-based Sgt Nicholson turned up at 0130 GMT.

Unlinked incidents

He told court: "I attempted to speak to him to try to get him to leave peacefully. He didn't make any sort of coherent response. All he could say was 'bite my neck'."

The defendant was handcuffed, arrested for breach of the peace and taken to the police station, but never charged.

Sgt Nicholson said he failed to link that incident with Mrs Leyshon's horrific murder, which made national headlines when police revealed a ritualistic motive was suspected.

He said he still did not connect the incidents when North Wales Police made a desperate plea on the BBC's Crimewatch programme in December.

"I didn't actually see the Crimewatch programme because I was working at the time. But no, I did not contact the programme."

'Body draining

But constable Alison Hughes - who was first at the grisly bungalow scene - told court she was unable to say whether the murder was common knowledge on Anglesey because seniors told her not to tell police colleagues about the incident.

Also on Wednesday, Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers - who conducted the post-mortem examination - said he thought 4ft 11ins Mrs Leyshon was stabbed 22 times from behind as she sat and watched television.

He said: "At the time I thought this was an attempt to dismember Mrs Leyshon's body.

"But, when I looked more closely, I thought the wounds were in a place you would expect if you were trying to drain a body."

The defendant denies ever being in Mrs Leyshon's home and the trial continues at Mold Crown Court, expected to last about two weeks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2134693.stm

Prayers for 'vampire' murder victim

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2172097.stm

Sunday, 4 August, 2002, 14:15 GMT 15:15 UK

Villagers have said prayers for the elderly victim murdered in a macabre ritual by a vampire enthusiast.

Mathew Hardman, 17, has begun a life sentence after he was found guilty of the "savage" murder of Mabel Leyshon, 90, in her bungalow at Llanfairpwll, Anglesey.

Village rector Rev Robert Townsend said Mrs Leyshon was being foremost remembered in Sunday prayers.

But also he called prayers for Hardman, in the hope he could come to admit his crime, and for his family in their heartbreak.

Hardman had denied stabbing Mrs Leyshon 22 times, removing her heart and drinking her blood at the quiet Welsh village in November 2001.

But he was found guilty at Mold Crown Court on Friday.

It was said the teenager was obsessed with vampires and the occult, and had told others he wanted to kill someone in order to become immortal.

Macabre death of elderly widow

As the jury returned a unanimous verdict and the judge ordered him to serve at least 12 years of a life sentence, Hardman, 17, wept in the dock and his mother shrieked and sobbed in the public gallery.

He had previously told her he had not committed the crime.

Hardman - who had lived just a few yards away from his victim and had been her paperboy - mutilated Mrs Leyshon's body before placing pokers at her feet in the shape of a cross.

Her heart had been removed, wrapped in newspaper and placed in a saucepan on a silver platter next to her body.

The prosecution said her killer drank her blood in a "macabre ritual".

The 14-day hearing was told how he smashed his way into Mrs Leyshon's bungalow where he was watching television.

DNA found in blood at the murder scene matched that of blood found on a knife at Hardman's home.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2172097.stm

Four Ukrainians held for cannibalism - (original BBC headline 'Satanic ritual?' was later replaced)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2129910.stm

Monday, 15 July, 2002, 18:38 GMT 19:38 UK

Ukrainian police say they have arrested three men and a woman on suspicion of murdering six people and eating their flesh.

Police officials in the central town of Zhytomyr said the group's last victim was an 18-year-old girl.

"They killed a young woman in a forest and then cut out fleshy parts of the body and ate them. This is horrible," a police spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

The last high-profile case in the region where cannibalism was a factor was that of Russia's serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo.

He killed 53 women and children in a prolonged campaign of serial murder which began in 1978.

Chikatilo - who grew up believing his older brother been kidnapped and eaten during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s - mutilated some of his victims by gnawing at them.

Black magic books

In what is believed to have been a Satanic ritual, the suspects killed the girl with two knife thrusts to the heart, local interior ministry representative Viktor Kurbatov was quoted as saying by the French news agency.

The suspects are said to have then scalped the young woman, boiled her decapitated head and to have eaten it before cutting out her organs.

Several days afterwards, police arrested the suspects when they were waiting to meet the girl's parents from whom they had demanded a $3,000 ransom.

One policeman was injured during the operation.

Police found "several books on black magic" at the house of the one of the suspects, a 53-year-old man, the official added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2129910.stm

Thames torso boy was sacrificed

Police suspect the victim was a West African child slave, after forensic evidence points to a ritual killing, report Martin Bright and Paul Harris

Martin Bright and Paul Harris

http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,726271,00.html

Sunday June 2, 2002 - The Observer

A young boy whose mutilated torso was discovered floating in the River Thames last September was the victim of a gruesome West African 'religious' sacrifice intended to bring good luck, and was trafficked into the country expressly for the killing.

Genetic tests on the boy - who was found with his head and limbs removed and wearing only a pair of orange shorts - point to a West African origin, probably Nigeria or a nearby country such as Togo or Benin.

Further analysis of stomach contents and bone chemistry show the child, whom police have named Adam, could not have been brought up in London. Detectives are now working on the horrifying theory that he was bought as a child slave in West Africa and smuggled to Britain solely to be killed.

Experts on African religion consulted by Scotland Yard believe Adam may have been sacrificed to one of the 400 'Orisha' or ancestor gods of the Yoruba people, Nigeria's second-largest ethnic group. Oshun, a Yoruba river goddess is associated with orange, the colour of the shorts, which were placed on Adam's body 24 hours after he was killed as a bizarre addition to the ritual. The body was then stored for a further 24 hours before being offered to the Thames.

The cultural clues fit neatly with the forensics as the Yoruba are found in Benin, Togo and Ghana as well as Nigeria. Thousands of Yoruba slaves were also taken to the Caribbean, where elements of their religion formed the basis of voodoo rituals.

A close examination of the cuts where the head and limbs were sliced from the body shows that they were carried out by an expert using extremely sharp knives specially prepared for the purpose. In a horrific operation reminiscent of animal sacrifice, the flesh around the limbs and neck was first cut down to the bones, which were then slashed with a single blow from an implement much like a butcher's meat cleaver. Adam would have been stretched out horizontally or upside down during the sacrifice and kept in position while the blood was drained from the body.

Officers working on the case believe that the level of expertise involved could show the perpetrators imported a magician or priest to carry out the ritual. They also believe the amputated body parts will have been kept as powerful magical trophies.

Richard Hoskins, a lecturer in the Study of Religions at Bath Spa University, who has studied ritual killings across Africa, said: 'This looks like a deviant variety of a West African religion. Someone would have done it to gain power. But the vast majority of Africans would find this abhorrent.'

In an unprecedented missing-person investigation, the police have even tracked down the origins of the orange shorts, which were made exclusively in China for German Woolworth stores. Police believe Adam may have arrived in England from Germany, a common route for people traffickers.

Police are now awaiting final results of the forensic tests, which should identify a specific country or ethnic group, before moving their investigation to Africa. Scotland Yard officers working on the case then plan to launch appeals to the parents of missing children in Adam's country of origin..

Commander Andy Baker of the Metropolitan Police, who is heading the investigation said: 'All we have is the trunk of a little boy and a very small pair of shorts. But when the work on the forensics identifies his home, we will go to that country and make direct contact with the government involved.'

Investigators have now discounted the theory that Adam was the victim of a so-called muti killing, where body parts are taken to be used in medicine. It is a practice widespread in areas of South Africa, and detectives travelled to Johannesburg to speak to experts. But all the evidence is now pointing to West Africa as holding the answers to the riddle of Adam's slaughter. It now seems clear it was not body parts his killers were after.

Expert forensic analysis of mitochondrial DNA - the first time such a test has been used in a criminal investigation - shows that Adam was almost certainly West African. Other gruesome evidence is the fact that Adam's genitals were left on his body. In muti murders the genitals are seen as powerful medicine; not so in West Africa where the 'luck' of an individual is believed to lie in the blood. Adam's blood was drained from his body after he was killed, but his genitals were undamaged. A further clue lies in the fact that Adam, who was between four and seven years old, was also circumcised. In southern Africa circumcision happens as a passage to adulthood. In West Africa it occurs shortly after birth.

The case has prompted a continent-wide alert that African ritual killings have been imported to Europe. Last Monday an international conference was held in the Dutch city of The Hague to discuss the phenomenon, and several countries' police forces are investigating deaths involving mutilations. Even Police believe that rich West Africans imported Adam from West Africa, probably using a specialist witch doctor for the task. The witch doctor would have procured the boy in West Africa, perhaps paying a fee to his family, a fee who may have expected him to be put to work abroad. He would then have been 'trafficked' to Europe.

Adam was well-treated before he was killed.. Traces of a common over-the-counter cough medicine were found in his stomach, indicating someone wanted him in good health for the day of his execution.

Could it happen again? Whatever business Adam's killers wanted to bless has already started. It is unlikely his killers will strike again. 'If another one happens then it is likely to be a different group of people involved. The ones who killed Adam are already satisfied with what they have done,' said Dr Hendrik Scholtz, an expert at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand.

Temi Olusanya, the Nigerian vice-chair of the African Caribbean Development Association said Adam's murder had deeply shocked the West African community. 'This is a crime that cannot be tolerated in African religions. Murder is murder and we should work together to find the people who did this,' he said.

http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,726271,00.html

Thais flock to magic guru

The Observer - 7th April 2002 - p24

A school in rural Thailand for black magic has attracted hundreds of students who want to learn love potions, verses to ward off ghosts and body tattoos that can stop bullets.

'I want to pass on all of my knowledge to new generations,' said self-styled guru Harn Raksajit. 'Black magic is an intellectual heritage from our ancestors, but it is about to die because of modern science.'

Voodoo 'practised in UK'

Friday, 8 March, 2002, 10:21 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1861393.stm

A sheet from a ritual is now not linked to the death

Voodoo rituals - some involving children - are being carried out in the UK, an investigation by BBC Radio 4's Today programme has revealed.

Animal sacrifice is one of the rites carried out under the umbrella of the west African region.

Practitioners are advertising in ethnic minority newspapers, often offering traditional remedies for illnesses.

A Today reporter attended a ceremony where 30 people watched a ritual involving a young girl with a speech defect.

The girl was wrapped in a black sheet and chanted over by a group of men wearing white satin robes.

Based in a disused warehouse in east London, the sect was examined by police investigating the dismembered torso of a young boy found in the Thames.

A sheet and candles used in one of their ceremonies was found nearby, but police are now certain there is no link to the killing.

Head cut off

They still believe the killing may have been ritualistic but have yet to identify the boy.

The vice-chairman of the Metropolitan Police Independent Advisory Group, John Azah, said he had been brought in by police for a new perspective on the murder.

He told Today: "His head had been cut off in a particular way, his arms and his legs had also been cut off in a particular way

"We are talking about either witchcraft, ju-ju or voodoo.

"A certain tribe or culture practise sacrifices, mainly animals, where animals are sacrificed in a particular way and then the blood is drunk to give them a certain strength, good health, to give them a certain potency.

"People will sacrifice anything, including humans.

"If people feel that human sacrifice is going to be more potent there is a view that the younger the child the stronger the medicine is."

He warned that attitudes towards foreign cultures in the UK left open the possibility unpleasant practices could be imported.

Cultural diversity

"In promoting cultural diversity we import the good and the bad," he said.

"If this is a ritual killing then unfortunately - as bad as it may sound - we have imported those aspects of culture into mainland Britain."

Detective Inspector Will O'Reilly, leading the investigation, said the police were "treading on new ground".

He said the intelligence gained in this case would not be lost, but fed back in if criminal offences are apparent.

"Other agencies within the police force will be interested in picking this up and bringing this forward," he said.

"We have got no evidence to say any human sacrifice has ever taken place in the UK."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1861393.stm

Father 'kills son in ritual sacrifice'

Tuesday, 26 February, 2002, 07:41 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1841502.stm

The police in Bangladesh say they have arrested a young Muslim cleric for allegedly killing his own son in a ritual sacrifice during Eid ul-Adha, the biggest Muslim festival.

They say the cleric, Golam Mustafa, admitted to having killed the seven-month-old boy, Sulayman, after receiving what he called a revelation.

Local newspapers in the northern Mymensingh district say residents in the cleric's home village found the boy with his throat cut.

He was apparently killed on Saturday when his mother was busy preparing meal for the festival.

The reports, which came out today after the public holiday, say the relatives claimed that the cleric was under treatment for depression.

Animals are traditionally slaughtered during the Eid, coinciding with the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1841502.stm

Satanists may endanger Russia's security

http://english.pravda.ru/society/2001/03/19/3045.html

Pravda - 19Mar01

According to Russia’s secret services, including FSB, there are about 15 Satanist sects in the city of Moscow alone.

The largest of them, “The Black Angel,” was formed in 1974-1975 in Moscow and in Tver, a city located some 200km north-west from Moscow. Satanism is believed to have spread to all large cities of the former Soviet Union in 1970s. Sizeable Satanist groups emerged in early 1980s.

The groups are formed by strict 5-grade hierarchy crowned by the “council,” the supreme agency. Women are said to frequently occupy the upper seats. According to NTV television channel, Satan followers may number several thousands in Russia. Of late, crime-tainted sects have displayed an elevated activity, according to law-enforcement bodies statistics. They penetrate into colleges and other higher-educational institutions, eagerly give interviews.

Gathering venues of Satanists are well known – a temple of sorts in Moscow’s northern Medvedkovo district, a kind of a base in the outskirts of Moscow, a cafe in the centre of Moscow, a construction site near the Bolshoi Theatre, and even Lubyanskaya Square where the feared KGB building is located.

On July 28th, 1999, the criminal police of Moscow’s Western Administrative District detained 2 Satanist sect members suspected of setting the great martyr princess Elizabeth chapel on fire in the night of October 8th, 1988 in Rublevo, near Moscow. The detained Satanists were youngsters of 18, and they viewed their act rather as a kind of game played with their fellow-“protesters.”

Satanists have largely fallen out of the focus of Soviet and then Russian secret services’ attention. But now, especially after a series of ritual murders it is high time to come to grips with the problem.

http://english.pravda.ru/society/2001/03/19/3045.html

Tour of Britain's bizarre underworld

Vikram Dodd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4347556,00.html

Friday February 1, 2002 - Guardian

Manuela Ruda's obsession with Satanism brought her to Britain where her tour of this nation's bizarre underbelly took her to the Isle of Skye.

There she met Tom Leppard, in his 60s, who lives in a cave and with whom she corresponded while awaiting her trial.

Mr Leppard said she had told him what she had done, but not the reason why.

He told Sky News: "I said you can't just hate, you've got to have something to hate. You can't hate this, or hate that without a reason. And she never answered the question."

Ruda told German police they had visited the UK twice, touring Scotland for five months in 1996 and in February 1997 visiting London.

Manuela said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods.

The so-called Leopard Man of Skye has told in the past how Ruda visited him four times in August 2000 as he worked in a Kyleakin hotel bar and said she seemed fascinated by his way of life. A colourful eccentric, Mr Leppard is in the Guinness Book of Records for having his body covered in a leopard tattoo.

Satanism in this country is secretive and underground, and there is no hard evidence pointing to the number of Satanists.

Iain Taylor, of the Evangelical Alliance, puts it in the thousands, although critics accuse evangelists of hyping up the threat as it suits their own agenda.

One estimate puts the number of committed Satanists in Britain at just 100.

Mr Taylor said: "There is increasing anecdotal evidence of people becoming involved in satanism, especially children."

Two years ago a UK branch of the American Church of Satan was set up, merging groups trying to recruit Satanists here, such as the Church of the Nine Angels and the UK Temple of Set.

Satanism has been linked in the media to allegations of sexual abuse, claims that led social services to seize children in high- profile cases such as those in Ayrshire, Rochdale and Orkney.

The allegations were found to be baseless.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4347556,00.html

Self-styled vampire reveals British link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4347554,00.html

Friday February 1, 2002 - Guardian

A 23-year-old Satanist jailed yesterday in Germany for a gruesome, ritual Satanic killing, said that she became a vampire in London.

In testimony which exposes the bizarre world of Britain's underground occult groups, Manuela Ruda said that she swapped the "mortal" world for a life of blood-drinking and devil worship after working in a club in London which she said was frequented by "vampires and human beings".

Ruda, who said she had sold her soul to the devil, recalled nightly visits to cemeteries, ruins and woods during her time in Britain.

She has also revealed that she toured Scotland where she visited Tom Leppard - the so-called Leopard Man of Skye who is covered head to toe with a leopard tattoo.

Ruda and her husband, Daniel, were found guilty at a court in Bochum, western Germany, of killing a 33-year-old man by hitting him with a hammer and stabbing him 66 times. After they had killed him, the couple drank his blood.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4347554,00.html

Vampire couple jailed for satanic murder

By Justin Rowlatt in Bochum

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=117582

01 February 2002

A couple who claimed to be vampires and killed a man by stabbing him more than 60 times in a satanic ritual were convicted of murder yesterday.

Daniel Ruda, 26, a former car-parts salesman, and his wife, Manuela, 23, were sentenced to 15 years and 13 years respectively in a secure psychiatric hospital, but the judge in the western German town of Bochum said the possibility that they could kill again meant they might never be released.

The pair had confessed to killing the man in their apartment surrounded by human skulls, cemetery lights, scalpels and incense ­ because the Devil ordered them to do so.

It was a particularly gruesome killing. The victim, Frank Hackerts 33, who was apparently chosen by the Rudas as their victim because of his love of the Beatles, was hit over the head with a hammer, stabbed 66 times and had a pentagram carved into his chest. The Rudas say they then drank his blood and slept together in a coffin they kept at their flat.

Manuela Ruda told the court: "We were not alone ­ there was a presence there, a powerful force." She said her husband had "terrible, glowing eyes" as he stood up before delivering the first hammer blow.

Manuela claimed she was first drawn to satanism during a visit to Britain. She told the court she drifted into the "gothic" scene after the Devil contacted her when she was 14. At 16, bored by her life in the small German town of Witten, she travelled to the Scottish Highlands where she worked in a hotel for a few months and enjoyed the emptiness, the cemeteries and gloomy atmosphere of the low clouds, she said. She spent time living in a cave on the Isle of Skye with Tom Leppard, a heavily tattooed 62-year-old man .

In London she worked in a gothic club in Islington where she claims to have joined a group who attended "bite parties" and worshipped the Devil. "We drank blood from living people," she told police. "We slept on graves. One time we dug a grave and I slept in it, just to see what it would feel like."

Manuela met Daniel Ruda after she returned to Germany and answered a lonely hearts advertisement in a heavy metal magazine. It read: "Black-haired vampire seeks princess of darkness who despises everything and everybody and has bidden farewell to life."

Throughout the trial the couple showed no remorse for the killing, maintaining that they had done Frank Hackerts a favour because he is now "beside Satan, the best place that he could be".

In the courtroom in Bochum the Rudas put on a daily show of defiantly provocative behaviour, including rude gestures, rolling their eyes manically and sticking their tongues out.

They claimed that because they were following the orders of the Devil, they could not be held responsible for murder. "If I kill a person with my car and half his bloody head is left on my bumpers, it is not the car that goes to jail," Daniel Ruda told the court, "it is the driver who is evil. I have nothing to repent, because I did nothing."

Psychiatric experts told the court that the couple were suffering from "severe narcissistic personality disturbances". As a result, the prosecution rejected calls for life sentences, arguing that the couple were mentally ill and could not be held wholly responsible for their actions. They are "not the monsters" depicted in the media, the prosecution said.

Passing sentence, Judge Arnjo Kerstingtombroke said: "This case was not about satanism but about a crime committed by two people with severe disorders. Nothing mystical or cult-like happened here; just simple, base murder."

He said the Rudas were not insane and had been fit enough to be tried, but that their pschiatric disorders were sufficient to stop him from handing down life sentences ­ the standard punishment for premeditated killing. The judge also said so much fan mail had been sent to the Rudas during the case that he was worried about the "limitless stupidity" of many members of the public.

Both defendants sat quietly as the sentence was read out, Daniel staring at his victim's mother, Manuela chewing gum. The victim's father, Hermann Hackerts, was also in court, as he had been throughout the trial. He said: "At the beginning I did not want to go to the trial but now I'm glad that we sat eye to eye. Now I understand that they are bad people, but people not devils, and absolutely unsound of mind."

On Channel 4 News, Daniel Ruda's lawyer, Hans Reinhardt, said he believed the couple's claim of demonic possession was a cover. "I think he [Daniel] pretends to be an instrument of Satan because he is the sort of person who says, 'I am the best, I am the greatest'," Mr Reinhardt said.

Daniel's motive may have been celebrity, his lawyer said. "He says, 'I want to get on stage, I want that everybody knows me ... I want to be as famous as Charles Manson and so I have to kill someone'," Mr Reinhardt said.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=117582

Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites

By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin

(Filed: 18/01/2002)

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/18/wvamp18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/01/18/por_right.html

A WOMAN who says she and her husband killed a German friend with 66 knife wounds on orders from the devil has claimed that she became a satanist in Britain.

German police say any evidence pointing to possible crimes or an illegal satanic ring in Britain will be sent to the relevant authorities.

Manuela Ruda and her husband, Daniel, have admitted killing their friend, Frank Haagen, "for Satan". She said she got a taste for vampirism and the occult while in London and Scotland.

She appeared at the regional court in Bochum in full gothic garb, her head partly shaved to reveal an upside down crucifix and a target tattooed on her skull.

Mrs Ruda, 23, gave a chilling account of drinking blood from volunteers contacted on the internet. She said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods.

"We drank blood together, from willing donors. You can't drink from the arteries, no-one is allowed that. I had implanted pegs put in the teeth which were pulled out and were replaced with fangs.

"I also slept on graves and even allowed myself to be buried in a grave to test the feeling. I signed over my soul to Satan two and a half years ago."

The couple have denied responsibility for killing Mr Haagen, 33, although both have admitted committing the crime.

Mrs Ruda told the court: "It was not murder. We are not murderers. It was the execution of an order. Satan ordered us to. We had to comply. It was not something bad. It simply had to be. We wanted to make sure that the victim suffered well."

Her husband compared himself and his wife to a vehicle involved in a fatal accident. "The car would not be charged," he said. "The driver is the bad guy. I have nothing to regret because I haven't done anything."

Mrs Ruda said she and her 26-year-old husband lured their victim to their flat. When they arrived a "strange force" and "other beings" were present.

"We were sitting on the couch the whole time, then my husband stood up," she said. "He had terrible, glowing eyes and hit out with the hammer.

"Frank stood up and said something, or wanted to say something. The knife was glowing and a voice told me: 'Stab him in the heart.'

"He then sank down. I saw a light flickering around him. That was the sign that his soul was going down. We said a satanic prayer.

"We were then exhausted, and alone, wanted to die ourselves. But the visitation was too short. We could no longer kill ourselves."

After killing Mr Haagen the couple cut an occult star on his stomach, drank his blood from a bowl and had sex in an oak coffin in which Mrs Ruda usually slept.

The couple were arrested in their flat, the walls of which were covered in satanic slogans and hung with an array of knives, axes and machetes.

Mr Haagen's mutilated and partially-decomposed body was found next to the coffin in the living room.

Dieter Justinsky, the public prosecutor, said: "I have never, ever seen such a picture of cruelty and depravity before. They simply had a lust for murder.

"Both believed in Satan, they worshipped him. A death list found in the flat contained the names of future victims. They drank his blood, slept in coffins and believed they would achieve immortality as vampires."

Several witnesses have testified that the couple suffered from personality disorders. They could both face long terms at secure psychiatric institutions.

The Rudas told police that they went to Britain twice, spending five months in Scotland in 1996 and visiting London in February 1997. The gothic phenomenon, an off-shoot of the punk scene, emerged in the late 1970s.

A spokesman for Bochum police said last night that any information relating to crimes in Britain would be passed to the relevant authorities.

The case continues.

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/18/wvamp18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/01/18/por_right.html

Murder Throws Spotlight on Rise in Satanism

By David Crossland

Thursday January 31 9:58 AM ET

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020131/od/satanists_dc_1.html

BOCHUM, Germany (Reuters) - A bizarre murder by two Devil worshippers has highlighted a rise in Satanism in Germany, where one expert estimates there are up to 7,000 followers, many of them also adhering to Nazi ideology.

Daniel and Manuela Ruda, a married couple who were being sentenced on Thursday, confessed to killing a friend with a hammer and 66 knife stabs last July, saying the Devil had ordered them to kill.

Both have severe psychological disorders, psychiatrists told the court in the western town of Bochum.

Accounts of Manuela's bloodsucking habit and the ritual in which she and her husband killed their victim -- carving a pentagram, the sign of the devil, into his chest and leaving a scalpel protruding from his stomach -- have fascinated Germany and focused attention on Satanism.

``If you study Internet chat pages you can see that the Rudas enjoy cult status with kids,'' said Ingolf Christiansen, author of a book on Satanism and commissioner for ideological issues at the Lutheran Protestant Church in Hanover.

Christiansen said Satanism was more widespread in Britain and the United States than in Germany, where he estimates there are between 3,000 and 7,000 followers.

``That's a conservative estimate. I see a rising tendency. The Internet is helping to spread it. It is driven by increasing brutalization in all areas and a corresponding loss of values.''

Satanism -- which has no official structure and means different things to different people -- typically involves worshipping Satan, the Devil, and a travesty of Christian practices and symbols.

Many adherents see it as a form of social Darwinism rejecting religious norms and promoting the right of the strong to dominate the weak.

Its practice often involves ceremonies with sex and sacrifice to tap dark primal forces. Most Satanists reject moral codes, saying an individual must determine what is good or bad.

Modern forms of Satanism draw on a host of traditions, from ancient Egyptian mythology to Celtic cults and Haitian Voodoo.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020131/od/satanists_dc_1.html

Satanic killers grin as they are locked away

Allan Hall in Bochum, Germany

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=27&si=682649&issue_id=6828

Daniel Ruda sticks out his tongue in court yesterday after being sentenced to 15 years for the bizarre murder of a friend who was stabbed 66 times and hit with a hammer

TWO German devil-worshippers were sentenced to be detained in secure psychiatric hospitals yesterday for the ritual killing of a man they claimed to have sacrificed to Satan.

Manuela and Daniel Ruda chewed gum, flashed mocking grins and gave the devil's sign of a closed fist with extended thumb and little finger when their month-long trial ended.

The married couple showed the same lack of respect for Doris Hackert, the mother of their 33-year-old victim, and her husband Hermann as they did to the court during the trial. They had poked out their tongues, snarled at the judge and abused journalists and witnesses.

There was uproar in the court when Judge Arno Kersting-Tombroke sentenced Manuela to 13 years in a secure mental facility and Daniel to 15 years, despite the prosecution's request for a maximum security prison.

The judge described them as "deeply disturbed individuals", but believed that psychiatric help rather than prison was what they needed.

The trial produced numerous sordid references to sacrifices, both animal and human, and drew into sharp focus a growing and disturbing interest in the occult in Germany and Britain.

The Rudas had a fascination for the dark side that developed into an obsession with death and ultimately led to the killing of Frank Hackert, an unassuming car parts salesman, on an oak coffin before an altar of skulls.

The occult is growing in Germany with an estimated 6,000 devil worshippers, most of them linked by the Internet.

Manuela, who ran away from school at 16, claimed to have learned vampirism and animal sacrifices at underground clubs in London and Edinburgh. During the trial, Manuela told of filing her teeth down to razor sharpness and of drinking men's blood in exchange for sex.

Manuela, now 23, met Daniel Ruda when he advertised in a heavy metal magazine: "Prince of Darkness seeks vampire who hates everyone and everything."

She married Daniel (27) last June and they killed Mr Hackert the following month.

Manuela said: "We had to kill - we couldn't go to hell unless we did."

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=27&si=682649&issue_id=6828

Met honours men who trapped satanic killer

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=492039&in_review_text_id=450752

by Keith Poole and Humfrey Hunter

Three men who disarmed a devil-worshipper after he stabbed one boy to death and was attacking another are being honoured today by the police.

Sheikh Salim, Anwar Ali Khan and Simon Weissand intervened as Edward Crowley launched a knife attack on Roberto Pineiro-Villar, 15, as his half brother Diego, 12, lay dying.

Mr Salim, 28, and Mr Khan, 26, wrestled Crowley to the ground and Mr Weissand, 34, helped pin the killer down after running from his flat overlooking the scene in Covent Garden.

Crowley, now 54, a disciple of satanist Aleister Crowley, was jailed for life last February for murdering Diego.

The trio will receive an award from the Metropolitan Police for their courage. The Mayor of Camden, Roger Robinson, will present a certificate of commendation at Camden town hall.

Frank Dobson, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, said: "They risked their lives for the sake of a total stranger. Like many people, I do not know if I would have had the courage to do it, and that is why they really deserve the honour."

Mr Khan and Mr Salim were working as waiters in the Sartaj Balti House when Crowley struck outside on Sunday 7 May, two years ago. Mr Salim told the Evening Standard before receiving the award: "I could not run away, I had to do something.

"At first I saw a man chase someone and grab him. I thought it was a domestic dispute as, from behind, the boy looked a bit like a woman. It looked like he was being punched but I thought that's a funny way to punch someone. The man just wasn't stopping.

"I went over and said, 'That's enough now, leave off.' He tried to stab me but missed. I grabbed him and felt something warm, looked at my sleeve and it was covered in blood. He turned towards me and then Anwar came running, shouting, 'He's got a knife!' and he saved me. We both grabbed him and wrestled him down. The boy was lying there motionless and the other kid was screaming with agony.

"All the time I was thinking if I had got there a minute or two earlier I might have saved both. The best thing was when his mum came and thanked me for saving her son's life. I was speechless. She had lost one son and was thanking me. I just hugged her."

Traumatised by the attack, Mr Salim moved away from London for six months and had counselling. He has never returned to the scene, though he has come back to London and works as a supervisor at a Bayswater restaurant.

Mr Khan, who still works at the Sartaj, said: "I think I did what anyone else would do but I still find it hard knowing so many people just stood and watched. A few weeks after it happened I went abroad just to get away from it. Time does heal it, though."

Foreign exchange broker Mr Weissand said he hoped the award would encourage others to do the same: "If more people are rewarded then more will be encouraged to react."

Crowley, born Henry Alan Bibby, changed his name to that of the infamous satanist. A paranoid schizophrenic, he developed a warped obsession for Diego after befriending the "polite and kind" schoolboy in Phoenix Gardens, Covent Garden.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk

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