harrychronicjr
Phoenix, AZ
age: 28
| KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.
"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)
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mom1st
York, SC
age: 31
|  If it's a scam for cash, why don't they just promise to make it bigger???
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mitchell1221
Chattanooga, TN
age: 45 online now!
| Deja vu is that what it`s called?
This has been kicked around on here already.
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harrychronicjr
Phoenix, AZ
age: 28
| no way! lol they want to say that they already did it so there is more potential to make money. id be more apt to pay for my weeny not get fixed than for you to make it bigger ya know
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harrychronicjr
Phoenix, AZ
age: 28
| this story just hit reuters news wire
Penis theft panic hits city..
Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:06pm EDT
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mitchell1221
Chattanooga, TN
age: 45 online now!
| http://www.datehookup.com/Thread-86961.htm
that`s just the news wire sending it around again,
perhaps with the spelling corrected. 
[Edited 4/23/2008 4:20:52 PM]
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harrychronicjr
Phoenix, AZ
age: 28
| now the edited makes sence at the end
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nicksterdemus
Little Rock, AR
age: 50
| Hey mon follow the money n snatch the squeeze box...
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harrychronicjr
Phoenix, AZ
age: 28
| at least it was today lol i thought you meant like back in the day
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sea_dragon
Crystal River, FL
age: 31
| I am selling the cure for $19.95, but wait act now and receive a second one free for the wife.
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