Tanzania: Court of Appeal upholds a death sentence for a ritual killing carried out on a witchcraft practitioner's instruction that sacrifice would bring prosperity
Request a correction or replyDisposition and response
Material that narrows or disputes the record
Appellate history
2026-03-16
The Court of Appeal of Tanzania upheld the conviction and the death sentence on 16 March 2026.
Record class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
a local practitioner of witchcraft who instructed that ritual sacrifice would bring prosperity (instigator), the perpetrator, acting on that ritual instruction
Organization
No organization assigned
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The killing was carried out on the instruction of a local witchcraft practitioner who told the perpetrator that ritual sacrifice would bring him prosperity — the ritual specialist's direction, not the family relationship, is what the court records as the reason the child was chosen.
- Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim
- Violent occult ideology or sacrifice
Evidence structure
Proceedings
Date in cited record · conviction and death sentence
High Court of Tanzania at Manyara. Emmanuel Safari was convicted of murder and an unnatural sexual offence over the killing of his one-and-a-half-year-old stepson on 21 March 2021, and sentenced to death. The court recorded that Safari, 'having been instructed by a local practitioner of witchcraft that ritual sacrifice would bring him prosperity, turned his attention to his stepson'.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- instruction by a witchcraft practitioner that ritual sacrifice would bring prosperity
- the belief, acted upon, that a child's death would produce wealth
Cited record
Sources
- specialist monitoring project appellate judgment report 'Tanzania — Shadows of superstition: court upholds death sentence in ritual murder', Ritual Killing in Africa, March 2026.
Specialist monitoring project's report of the Court of Appeal of Tanzania's judgment of 16 March 2026 upholding Emmanuel Safari's conviction and death sentence for the murder of his one-and-a-half-year-old stepson on 21 March 2021, naming the appellate bench (Justices Korosso, Mashaka and Ngwembe) and recording that Safari had 'been instructed by a local practitioner of witchcraft that ritual sacrifice would bring him prosperity'.
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://www.ritualkillinginafrica.org/2026/03/17/tanzania-shadows-of-superstition-court-upholds-death-sentence-in-ritual-murder/ Corpus classification: specialist-monitoring-project; evidentiary role: appellate-judgment-report.
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-28 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear research cycle 2026-07-28 (manual retrieval and reading)
Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.
Related record
Related cases · Southern African muti
- 2024 · Vredenburg, South Africa Joslin Smith — mother charged, muti trafficking of a child
- 2021 · Cullinan, South Africa Gabisile Shabane: child killed for muti (life terms)
- 2022 · Malawi Malawi albino ritual murder: 155-year sentences
- 2020 · Limpopo, South Africa Hlungwani ritual murder: 4 relatives, life
- 2022 · Kayunga, Uganda Uganda v. Sentongo: infant murder and aggravated trafficking for ritual exploitation
- 2016 · Balama, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique Cabo Delgado albino ritual murder: two men sentenced to 35 years on a ritual specialist's instructions
- 2018 · KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa South Africa: life sentences for a killing to obtain body parts for muthi — affirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeal
- 2026 · Iringa Region, Tanzania Tanzania: father sentenced to death for killing his four-year-old son in a ritual killing