21 Nov 2009 Peru : Humans killed for fats

[Watchman]

Nov 21, 2009
Humans killed for fats


A police officer displays two
bottles containing human fat while another sets seized sticks of dynamite during a press conference in Lima, Thursday, November 19, 2009. -- PHOTO: AP


LIMA - A PERUVIAN 'brotherhood,' accused of murdering at least 60 people and selling victims' fat to foreign cosmetics traders, carried out its grisly work undetected for 30 years, Peruvian police said on Friday.

The gang used abandoned buildings in the Amazon jungle and high Andes to clandestinely butcher victims and 'formed a network, or brotherhood that carried out criminal activities', police general Eusebio Felix said.

Peruvian authorities have taken three men and a woman into custody and are hunting two unnamed Italians suspected of buying human fat for as much as US$15,000 (S$21,000) a litre - to be used in European cosmetics.

'Those detained have confessed that after assassinating their victims, they slit their throats, hung the torsos and limbs on 'S' shaped hooks,' said Gen Felix. 'Later, to extract the fat, they lit candles to heat the room.' The fat would seep out of the thorax of the decapitated bodies and 'fell into receptacles for three days and was later decanted'.

Jorge Sanz Quiroz, a prosecutor in the case, told AFP 'two Italians were implicated. They have been identified but their names cannot be released until they have been captured. 'These people apparently bought the fat from the detainees to sell in European laboratories.'

One of the Italians is said to have left for Europe. -- AFP

 

[Watchman]

No wonder Lee Hsien Loong look so fearful during APEC .