The ten black men, nine black women and two white women are from the same region of Nigeria, near Benin City, that was identified by DNA tests as the birthplace of the murdered boy.
‘Adam’, as he has been called by police officers, is believed to have been smuggled into Britain to be killed in a ‘religious’ ritual.
An offering
The ritual theory came about after the discovery of ground bone fragments in his stomach, indicating that he had swallowed a potion shortly before his death. The manner in which his head and limbs were removed and blood drained also suggested that a human sacrifice had ocurred.
Initially, the ritual was thought to be a ‘muti murder’ – a South African rite where body parts are used as ‘medicine’. However, certain indications (too gruesome to detail here) ran counter to what is known about muti customs.
Orange shorts, placed on Adam 24 hours after his death, provided another clue. The colour orange is associated with ‘Ochun’, one of the 400 ‘Orisha’ or ancestor gods of the Yoruba people, Nigeria’s second biggest ethnic group.
Ochun is the youngest of the Orishas and ‘The Mother of Secrets’. She is regarded as an intermediary between the Yoruba and Olodumare, the supreme deity. Prayers are unlikely to reach Olodumare without using Ochun as an intermediary. She is known as ‘One who gives good effective treatment to children; One who has neither bone nor blood’.
It appears that Adam may have been sacrificed to Ochun to speed prayers, probably a plea for luck, to Olodumare. But while the cultural and forensic clues identify this as the probable motive, Adam’s death shouldn’t be taken as an indication that such rituals are approved of, or even common, in West Africa.
As Temi Olusanya, the Nigerian vice-chair of the African Caribbean Development Association, points out, the murder has deeply shocked the West African community: "This is a crime that cannot be tolerated in African religions. Murder is murder and we should work together to find the people who did this."
People traders
The police are also keen to focus attention on a less lurid but no less serious side of the investigation: human trafficking.
The 21 people arrested today are all being held for immigration, forgery and passport offences. Detective Inspector Will O'Reilly, leading the inquiry, says: "We've uncovered what we believe is a criminal network concentrating on people trafficking, particularly from mainland Africa through Europe to the UK, the route we believe was taken by the victim of this murder."
There are no laws against human trafficking in Nigeria and it has an active and growing market in people. While the victims are mainly women, the International Labour Organisation has also identified an extensive trade in child labourers and, in some cases, in children for human sacrifice.
Though the traffic is most widespread within the African continent, police and immigration officials across Europe have reported a steady flow of Nigerian women and children across their borders. Most end up as domestic servants, market traders, child beggars and prostitutes. The only appropriate word for this business is ‘slavery’.
It’s a tragedy that it’s taken the horrifying death of an unknown five year old to draw the media’s attention to the fact that slavery is prospering in the 21st century. Let’s hope that now it’s in the headlines, strenuous efforts will be made to eradicate it.