Classification: Unverified account

Sierra Leone: offers of human body parts, a BBC investigation and unanswered deaths

In 2025, BBC Africa Eye filmed men who said they could supply human body parts for alleged rituals and followed a police operation. This dossier traces the cases of Papayo and Fatmata Conteh, separates recorded offers from unproven networks, and asks why families still lack answers.

Makeni, Bombali, Serra Leoa · See stories from this place and nearby

An investigation, not a mapped market

In November 2025, BBC Africa Eye published Money Rituals: Africa’s Deadliest Taboo, an investigation led by Sierra Leonean journalist Tyson Conteh. Undercover reporters recorded conversations with two men who claimed they could obtain human body parts for rituals associated by supposed clients with wealth or power. The film and article are records of offers and claims made on camera. They are not an inventory of completed sales or proof that the international network described by the men existed.

The reporting moves between Makeni, in Bombali district; an area of Kambia district near Guinea; and Waterloo, in the wider Freetown region. The atlas marker approximately identifies central Makeni, where interviewed families lived. It is not a home address, crime scene or anyone’s location. That movement is part of the story: the deaths that led Conteh to investigate cannot automatically be attributed to the men he later met undercover.

Papayo and the unanswered question

Conteh returned to Makeni because of the death of Papayo, an 11-year-old boy. According to his mother, Sallay Kalokoh, he went out to sell fish and did not return. After about two weeks of searching, his body was found in a well with parts missing. The 2025 report places the crime about four years earlier, in 2021. His mother wanted to know who killed him; at the time of the BBC investigation’s publication, no one had been brought to justice for his death, according to the broadcaster.

There is a crucial boundary here. The death and the condition in which the body was found are at the heart of the family’s account and the reporting. A ritual motive was a suspicion; the BBC itself said police had not even confirmed that classification in Papayo’s case. Turning his mother’s grief into proof of a particular commission, buyer or organised group would supply an answer the case has not yet produced.

Kambia: what the masked man said

In Kambia, a team member used the assumed name Osman and posed as a politician willing to pay for a sacrifice. A man calling himself Kanu, his face concealed, talked about important clients in other countries and showed something he called a human skull. He also quoted a price for a request. The scenes record what he showed and said; the published material provides no independent forensic test of the object or identification of victims connected to him.

The BBC itself acknowledged two possibilities often lost in sensational versions: the political connections and scale of the supposed network could not be verified, and Kanu might have been a scammer. The team passed its material to local police but said it received no later response. A recorded offer warrants investigation; on its own it does not establish that the supplier committed every crime he described.

Waterloo: when the camera reached the police

In Waterloo, another man known in the report as Idara told the undercover reporter he worked with many collaborators and could obtain different human parts. He claimed that his team was ready to seek a victim. The reporter told him not to proceed and, after a call claiming that someone had been selected, alerted police. The BBC then followed an operation involving representatives of the Council of Traditional Healers.

During the search, participants said they saw materials resembling human bones and hair. The report did not publish a forensic finding identifying every object. Idara and two other men were arrested and, according to the BBC, charged with practising sorcery and possessing traditional weapons associated with ritual crimes; all three pleaded not guilty and were released on bail while inquiries continued. A Sierra Leonean outlet also reported the operation. Arrest and charges are procedural facts; they are not convictions for selling human parts or murder.

Another death during the reporting

In May 2025, while the BBC investigation was under way, the reporter’s cousin Fatmata Conteh was killed in Makeni. She was 28, worked as a hairdresser and was the mother of two children. Missing teeth led people close to her to suspect a ritual motive. Her family paid to move her body to Freetown for an autopsy which, according to the BBC, was inconclusive. At publication, the broadcaster reported no arrests in her case.

Fatmata’s death should not be turned into an anonymous example of “another victim of the trade.” No connection between her, Idara, Kanu and a transaction has been demonstrated. The investigation does show a family forced to pay for investigative steps while living with uncertainty about the motive. It also explains why a hypothesis can acquire social force even as forensic evidence remains insufficient.

Earlier testimony provides context

The issue did not begin with the BBC camera. At a September 2023 public hearing in the US Congress, Miriam Fullah, a survivor-protection manager with World Hope International in Sierra Leone, described her experience with survivors of violence linked to beliefs in sacrifice. She said her team had assisted seven families and stressed the difficulty of obtaining data on such crimes. This is direct professional testimony in a public record, not a national prevalence estimate.

Fullah also explained that deaths suspected of ritual motive may proceed in court simply as homicide, making specific counts difficult. Her testimony does not verify claims made by Kanu or Idara two years later; it is another kind of evidence, arising from survivor services and court support. Distinguishing professional testimony, an individual case record and a prevalence estimate prevents a small number from being inflated to describe a whole country.

Human trafficking, medical organs and body parts

Sierra Leone’s 2022 anti-trafficking law includes illicit organ removal among forms of exploitation. That establishes a legal means to address one type of abuse. But “trafficking people for organ removal,” “trading body parts for supposed charms” and “clandestine transplant surgery” describe different mechanisms. Filming offers of parts for rituals does not demonstrate a medical transplant network.

Nor does a claim to have access to human remains prove where a bone came from or that someone was killed to obtain it. Such conclusions would require forensic identification, chain of custody, links to disappearances, payments and testable testimony. The absence of those elements from the public record does not make the filmed threat trivial; it defines what can be asserted without harming victims or the presumption of innocence of those charged.

Traditional healers and the danger of generalisation

Sheku Tarawallie, president of Sierra Leone’s Council of Traditional Healers, assisted in the BBC-described operation and rejected the idea that all healers should be associated with murder. This detail rarely survives the headlines: practitioners of traditional medicine also tried to help police identify suspicious conduct. The investigation concerns specific people and claims, not a condemnation of a religion, a profession or a country’s population.

In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution against abuses linked to witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks. Its human-rights focus matters because violence can be directed both against suspected targets of attacks and against people accused without evidence. Accountability requires investigating acts, protecting witnesses and collecting proof; spreading panic or automatically linking cultural beliefs to crime creates further harm.

A rumour that can distort another debate

Another example shows how easily “human parts” becomes a catch-all explanation: rumours claimed that the drug kush in Sierra Leone contained human bones. In 2025, chemical testing reported by the Associated Press identified synthetic opioids in the nitazene group or synthetic cannabinoids as central components of the tested samples. It does not establish that every dose is identical, but it does not support the claim that bones explain the drug’s effect.

This episode is separate from the BBC investigation. Its place here is methodological: amid real fear, a powerful allegation can circulate faster than a test. The same discipline applies to victim counts, supposed political connections and the identity of objects seen in a search. Without testing and due process, a striking image remains a question rather than an answer.

The evidence boundary and where to go next

Documented: the BBC undercover investigation, recorded offers and statements, the Waterloo police operation, families’ accounts of relatives killed and public testimony from a survivor-protection professional. Still under inquiry or unproven in the sources consulted: forensic origin of every displayed object, the size of the alleged networks, completed sales captured on film, a ritual motive in Papayo’s and Fatmata’s deaths, and the criminal guilt of the three accused men. The “unverified account” label applies to the central claims of organised trade, not to the existence of the deaths or investigation.

To go further, viewers can watch the original documentary, with a distressing-content warning; compare the recorded words with the BBC text; read Miriam Fullah’s testimony; and examine the 2022 law. The judicial outcome of the cases mentioned was not established by the consulted sources. The human question remains open: families need investigations able to provide names, evidence and answers, not a myth speaking for them.

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