BRITAIN: An eight-year-old girl told a court yesterday how a woman who accused her of being witch hit her with a high-heeled shoe. The girl said Sita Kisanga also punched her in the eye and woke her up and accused her of witchcraft.
In a videoed police interview played to the Old Bailey, she said Ms Kisanga, who she referred to as "aunty", also accused other children who visited her house of being involved in witchcraft.
Kisanga (35) of Hackney, east London, and a 39-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and who the crown say was her real aunt, both deny conspiracy to murder and child cruelty charges.
Kisanga's brother, Sebastian Pinto (33) and his girlfriend, Kiwonde Kiese (21), both of Stoke Newington, north London, deny aiding and abetting child cruelty between August 2002 and November 2003.
The prosecution allege the girl was then beaten, starved, cut with a knife and had chilli peppers rubbed in her eyes after being accused of being a witch.
An attempt to put her in a laundry bag and drown her in the New river in north London was abandoned at the 11th hour in November 2003, the court was told.
The girl had been brought to Britain to Kisanga's flat 15 months earlier by the 39-year-old woman who claimed to be her mother.
In the interview shown to the court, she said Kisanga had told her and her "mum" that they had to leave her home. - (PA)