Seven dead, 14 tortured in Panama exorcism rites

PANAMA CITY—Seven people were killed in a bizarre religious ritual in a jungle community in Panama, in which Indigenous residents were rounded up by about 10 lay preachers and tortured, beaten, burned and hacked with machetes, authorities said Thursday.

Police freed 14 members of the Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous group who had been tied up and beaten with wooden cudgels and Bibles.

Local prosecutor Rafael Baloyes described a chilling scene found by investigators when they made their way to the remote Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous community near the Caribbean coast Tuesday.

Police were prepared for something bad, Baloyes said, but were still surprised by what they discovered at an improvised “church” at a ranch where a little-known religious sect known as “The New Light of God” was operating.

“They were performing a ritual inside the structure. In that ritual, there were people being held against their will, being mistreated,” Baloyes said.

“All of these rites were aimed at killing them if they did not repent their sins.”

About two kilometres away from the church building, authorities found a freshly dug grave with the corpses of six children and one adult. The dead included five children as young as a year old, their pregnant mother and a 17-year-old female neighbour.

“They searched this family out to hold a ritual and they massacred them, mistreated them, killed practically the whole family,” Baloyes said, adding that one of the suspects in the killing is the grandfather of the children who were slain.