ACT OF CANNIBALISM: How a Man Turned To A Cannibal and Ate Human
The buses throwing up clouds of red clay dust had yet to rub out the ugly bloodstain in the dirt. A Muslim man had been murdered here a few days ago, by Christians. His limbs were hacked off. Then one of the crowd ate the flesh in a public demonstration of cannibalism.
We were filming nearby when a young man in a yellow T-shirt came up to talk to me.
"I am the naughty one," he said in broken French. Puzzled, I shook his hand and was about to ease past him when I noticed the machete tucked into his skinny jeans. "I am the naughty one," he repeated.
With a sickening feeling, I realised I was talking to the cannibal.
Camera phones had captured the crime. The pictures show a charred and dismembered body being dragged through the street by a crowd. A man held a severed leg and bit down into it.
The same man was standing in front of me. He was even wearing the same yellow T-shirt.
A few minutes earlier, I had spoken to a horrified witness, Ghislein Nzoto. He said a frenzy began when the Muslim man was dragged from a bus.
"People started attacking him, kicking him. They smashed a rock against his head. They kept going even after he was dead."
He went on: "They set the body on fire. There were about 20 youths. They cut a whole leg off. Then one of them started to eat it. He bit into it four times and swallowed. It was raw - not burned.
"This was right in front of the Burundian peacekeepers. One of the soldiers vomited. Then he chased people away with his gun."
'I swore revenge'
The cannibal's name was Ouandja Magloire - though he told me he was now known as "Mad-dog". We went somewhere a bit quieter so I could ask him why he had done this awful thing.
He told me that Muslims had killed many members of his family: his pregnant wife, his sister-in-law, and her new baby.
He saw his victim sitting on the bus and decided to follow it. More and more people joined him until he was at the head of a mob.
"We followed him," he said. "If he reached the intersection, the Burundis would protect him. So we told minibus driver to stop. The driver said: 'You're right. He is a Muslim.'"
He described what happened after the man was dragged off the bus: "I kicked his legs out from under him. He fell down. I stabbed his eyes.
"Muslim! Muslim! Muslim. I stabbed him in the head. I poured petrol on him. I burned him. Then I ate his leg, the whole thing right down to the bone - with bread. That's why people call me Mad-dog."
The most disturbing part of the video is where "Mad-dog" is seen happily chewing, his cheeks bulging. He waves a leg about in between mouthfuls. I returned to the question of why he had done this.
"Because I am angry," he said. He had no other explanation
'Magic' powers
The witness I'd spoken to, Ghislein Nzoto, said no-one tried to help the man.
"No-one at all," he said, shaking his head. "Everyone's so angry with the Muslims: no way anyone was going to intervene."
He didn't agree with Muslims being killed but it was at least something he could understand, he said. Like others I spoke to, he was baffled by the act of cannibalism.
He agreed with me that it could simply be the act of a disturbed individual.
Or it might come from hatreds that have exploded in a country that never before experienced sectarianism. Or, his final explanation, this could be something to do with sorcery.
Many of the Christian fighters we met - the anti-Balaka - believe in magic. They go into battle wearing a variety of amulets. A group of fighters at a checkpoint told me some of the amulets contained the flesh of men they had killed.
"We are bullet-proof," their commander told me, chuckling.
"Mad-dog" Magloire went much further than these fighters. His singular act might be the result of his own demons, not a symptom of the conflict.
But as we interviewed him, a small crowd gathered, all Christian. They shook his handed and patted his head, smiling and laughing. To them, he was a hero.
That does not augur well for the future of the Central African Republic.
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