Conviction Witchcraft- and sorcery-accusation violence Killing or assault after a witchcraft or sorcery accusation Bariadi District, Simiyu Region, Tanzania · 2016

Republic v Mpelwa: murder conviction based on confessions describing a witchcraft motive

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

No public appellate judgment affecting this conviction or sentence was located in the July 2026 source audit.

Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

relative acting on a witchcraft belief, participant whose confessions described the claimed motive

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The High Court found that Mpelwa's two confession statements admitted killing a relative with a machete because of a witchcraft belief. The court treated those statements as corroborated by the scene, physical evidence and witness testimony and convicted him of murder.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2022-03-11 · murder conviction and sentence

High Court of Tanzania, Shinyanga District Registry sitting at Bariadi, Republic v Sungwa Mpelwa, Criminal Session Case 34 of 2017. The court convicted Sungwa Mpelwa of murder after finding that his police and extra-judicial confessions were voluntary, truthful and corroborated by independent evidence. It imposed the mandatory death sentence then provided by the Penal Code.

Documented coercion mechanisms

witchcraft accusation
claimed supernatural harm
family violence
planned armed attack

Cited record

Sources

high court judgment conviction and sentencing judgment High Court of Tanzania, Republic v Sungwa Mpelwa (Criminal Session Case 34 of 2017) [2022] TZHC 11873 (Mar. 11, 2022).: The judgment records the family relationship, attack, confession evidence, corroboration analysis, express witchcraft motive, murder conviction and mandatory death sentence. It also preserves the court record's inconsistent day-and-month references for the incident.
legal repository judgment mirror access copy SheriaHub, reproduction of Republic v Sungwa Mpelwa [2022] TZHC 11873 (Mar. 11, 2022).: The legal-repository mirror supplies a readable full-text access copy of the Tanzanian High Court judgment while the official TanzLII host applies automated access controls.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://tanzlii.org/en/akn/tz/judgment/tzhc/2022/11873/eng%402022-03-11 Corpus classification: high-court-judgment; evidentiary role: conviction-and-sentencing-judgment.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://sheriahub.com/cases/tz/caselaw/republic-v-sungwa-mpelwa-criminal-session-case-34-of-2017-2022-tzhc-11873-11-march-2022 Corpus classification: legal-repository-judgment-mirror; evidentiary role: access-copy. SHA-256 6d190a53a2cf2c634780f3991aca329a62cad28a37bcd530ca9797d79d973044
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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