Atrocities enough to make flesh crawl

THE revelations about Isis cannibalism come after a number of real-life Hannibal Lecters have come to light.

In Russia in 2009, two men confessed to stabbing a victim and beating him with a hammer.

They then cut up his body and ate part of it, before selling some of it to a kiosk that sold doner kebabs and pies.

Notorious Joseph Kony, chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, has been responsible for a long list of horrific crimes, including cannibalism.

One particularly disgusting attack was meted out on a group of women Kony wanted to make an example of.

A woman called Laweel was told that she and 10 others were to be mutilated and sent home alive as a warning to others not to join the fight against Kony’s troops.

The women were lined up and kidnapped children were told to sharpen a row of knives and machetes.

One by one, the women had their noses, lips and ears cut off.

They were then made to eat their own flesh.

In World War II, Japanese troops practised cannibalism on enemy soldiers and civilians.

They sometimes cut flesh from living prisoners of war, according to documents discovered by a Japanese academic in Australia.

In most cases, the motive was apparently not shortage of food, but “to consolidate the group feeling of the troops”.

Brendan Higginbotham was forced to eat part of his ear and he needed plastic surgery to repair horrific injuries inflicted on him by thugs in Newbridge, County Kildare in 2011.

He was attacked by a gang in the town who dragged him down a lane and beat him with a hammer and a metal bar.

Higginbotham was injured on his head, jaw, leg and ear.

Police spokesman John Joe O’Connell said at the time: “Part of this man’s ear was cut off and he was actually forced to eat it.”

There have also been cases where people have eaten human flesh by accident.

In 2004, David Scheiding unwittingly swallowed some of a fast food employee’s finger which had found its way into his chicken burger in Tipp City, Ohio.