Trafficker may be key to torso in Thames

Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Wednesday July 7, 2004
The Guardian

A man convicted of people-trafficking yesterday may hold the key to the horrific ritual killing of the African boy known as Adam, according to the detective heading the murder hunt.

The man was named in Southwark crown court, London, as Mousa Kamara, 30, but police say he is Kingsley Ojo, 35, from Nigeria. He admitted two charges of smuggling adult illegal immigrants into the UK, and using a false passport and driving licence.

Police suspect he may be the man who brought the boy, whose torso was found floating in the Thames in Septem ber 2001, to Britain. The boy, who was black and aged five or six, had been decapitated and had his limbs hacked off. A pair of orange shorts had been put on the torso after death.

Detectives believe he was a ritual sacrifice, of which there are believed to be hundreds every year in Africa. Unable to identify the victim, or to find the rest of his body, Scotland Yard was initially baffled.

But forensic experts, using skills developed to help identify victims of the September 11 attacks, carried out advanced analysis of his bones, revealing his diet, from which they were able to deduce that he was from the region around Benin city in Nigeria.

Ojo, arrested with 20 others in a series of immigration-linked raids across London last July, is also from Benin city. Police do not suspect him of murdering Adam, but they are interested in the geographical link and his connection with other suspects.

Detective Chief Inspector Will O'Reilly, who heads the murder inquiry, said: "This man was discovered during the course of the Adam investigation, operating a trafficking enterprise between Nigeria, Europe and the UK.

"We interviewed him before, and he has been eliminated as far as the murder is concerned. But he is from the same city as Adam and is associated with one of our suspects, so we would like to speak to him again. We still suspect he may have had something to do with trafficking the child into the country."

DCI O'Reilly said the Crown Prosecution Service was considering conspiracy to murder charges in relation to other suspects, but not against Ojo.

The inquiry into Adam's death has been painstaking. Police checked DNA of 39,000 black people on the Metropolitan police database to try to find relatives, but without success. They also combed the Thames river bank for clues. Six post mortem examinations have been carried out and forensic analysis is continuing.

The police have talked to forces all over the world, comparing other cases of possible ritual murder. In 2002, they went to South Africa, which has a serious problem with muti killings, where people are murdered for body parts used in traditional medicine.

Last year, detectives travelled thousands of miles around Nigeria, researching ritual murders, in an attempt to pinpoint Adam's birthplace. A scientist at Kew Gardens worked out that Adam had been given a potion containing poisonous calabar beans up to 48 hours before his death. The calabar, commonly used in witchcraft rituals in west Africa, causes paralysis while keeping the victim conscious.

Children and young people are preferred for sacrifice, and are kept conscious to the point of death because their screams are said to waken the ancestors necessary to give power to the ceremony. Blood is drained from the body and sometimes drunk by the participants.

In July 2002, Joyce Osagiede, a Nigerian also from Benin city, was arrested in Glasgow and questioned about the murder. She has not been charged and is currently back in Nigeria.

Last year, police in Dublin questioned her estranged husband, Sam Onojhighovie, about the murder. He was convicted of people-trafficking in Germany in his absence, and German authorities are trying to extradite him.