Swaziland Witches – Watch your Altitude

Witches’ broomsticks are considered similar to any heavier-than-air transportation device that is airborne, reports The Star.

Broomstick-flying witches to be brought down in Swaziland

Times LIVE | 13 May, 2013 10:53

Fictional wizard Harry Potter riding his broomstick.
Image by: HO

Witches flying broomsticks in Swaziland above 150 metres will be subject to arrest and a hefty fine of R500 000, civil aviation authorities said, according to a report.

“A witch on a broomstick should not fly above the [150-metre] limit,” Civil Aviation Authority marketing and corporate affairs director Sabelo Dlamini told the newspaper.

No penalties exist for witches flying below 150 metres.

The report said it was hard to say how serious he was, but witchcraft isn’t a joking matter in Swaziland, where the people believe in it.

The statute also forbids toy helicopters and children’s kites from ascending too high into the country’s airspace.

Dlamini was asked by the Swazi press to explain the country’s aviation laws following the arrest of a private detective, Hunter Shongwe, for operating a toy helicopter equipped with a video camera, of which he boasted using to gather surveillance information similar to the way a drone aircraft operates.

The detective was charged with operating an unregistered aircraft and for failing to appear before his chief to be questioned by traditional authorities about his toy drone, the first of its kind in Swaziland.

Swazi brooms are short bundles of sticks tied together and do not have handles. Swazi witches are known to use them to fling potions about homesteads – but not for transport.

from:    http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/2013/05/13/broomstick-flying-witches-to-be-brought-down-in-swaziland

Saudi “Witch” Beheaded —

If this is true, it is another indication of small minds and bigoted religious views.  What is religion?  In many ways it is ‘religere’ a rope to bind and control, and those who do not accept are ostracized, tortured, and even put to death.

Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Black Magic

Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor
Date: 14 December 2011 Time: 04:35 PM ET

An accused witch, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. She had been convicted of practicing “witchcraft and sorcery,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry. Such a crime is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia, and so Nassar was sentenced to death. Nassar’s sentence was appealed — and upheld — by the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council.

Nassar, who claimed to be a healer and mystic, was arrested after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in her possession, including herbs, glass bottles of “an unknown liquid used for sorcery,” and a book on witchcraft. According to a police spokesman, Nassar had also falsely promised miracle healings and cures, charging ill clients as much as $800 for her services.

Many Shiite Muslims — like many fundamentalist Christians — consider fortune-telling an occult practice and therefore evil. Making a psychic prediction or using magic (or even claiming or pretending to do so) are seen as invoking diabolical forces. Fortune-telling, prophecy and witchcraft have been condemned by Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious leaders. There is some question as to whether Saudi law technically outlaws witchcraft, though in a country where politics and religion are so closely aligned the distinction is effectively moot.

Just last year a Lebanese man named Ali Sabat, who for years had dispensed psychic advice and predictions on a television show, was accused of witchcraft. Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia by the religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. His crime, like that of Nassar, was practicing sorcery, and Sabat was condemned to death in April 2010, though it’s still unknown if his sentence has been carried out.

Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are not unheard of around the world, especially in political campaigns where they are used as a smear tactic. Close associates of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were accused last year of using witchcraft and summoning genies by influential clerics in that country. According to news reports, about two dozen of Ahmadinejad’s close aides have been arrested and charged with being “magicians.” One man, Abbas Ghaffari, was reportedly accused of summoning a genie who caused a heart attack in a man who was persecuting him.

Even the United States is not immune; Christine O’Donnell, the Republican who ran a failed bid for a Senate seat in 2010, had to answer political questions about whether she had practiced witchcraft. For centuries, accusations of (and laws against) witchcraft have been used as a tool by those in power to silence dissenters; whether that was the case with Nassar is unknown, but her death is a reminder that belief in magic is taken very seriously in many parts of the world — and can have grave consequences.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17486-saudi-arabia-witch-beheaded.html