An
infamous cult leader, suspected of cannibal and a convicted rapist
Steven Tari, a.k.a. “Black Jesus”, has been chopped to death in a remote
Papua New Guinea village, reports said on August 31, 2013.
Steven
Tari had been on the run since escaping from a prison in Madang in the
Pacific nation’s east during a mass break-out with 48 others in March.
Madang
police chief Sylvester Kalaut said that Tari and one of his followers
were killed at a village about 20 kilometres (12 miles) outside Madang
on Thursday as they were attacking a young woman.
“He
is now dead and this could be the fate of the others who are also on
the run from authorities and I am warning and strongly urging those
escapees to surrender themselves to authorities,” Kalaut told the
reporters.
Steven
Tari, a failed Lutheran pastor who was widely known as Black Jesus, was
found guilty in 2010 of raping girls who belonged to his
Christian-based sect and sentenced to up to 10 years.
At
the time, he had thousands of village followers, including a core of
armed warriors to protect him, in what is commonly referred to as a
“cargo cult”.
As part of his “culture ministry”, he preached that young girls were to be “married” to him as it was God’s prophecy.
Kalaut
said the woman Tari was in the process of attacking was “a flower girl
tricked into joining the cult”, adding that angry villagers had
surrounded him and his companion and killed them.
His death follows that of a young high-school girl about a week ago – a murder alleged to have been carried out by Tari.
When
he was captured in 2007, there were widespread allegations that his
cult also practised cannibalism and sacrificial blood rituals, but
police only charged him with rape.
Black
magic, sorcery and cannibalism sometimes occur in Papua New Guinea. For
example, last year, police arrested dozens of people linked to an
alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating
their brains raw and making soup from their penises.
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