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MZUZU. — A court in Malawi’s city of Mzuzu has sentenced to life imprisonment 33-year-old Sam Kaumba for attempting to kill an albino.

With panga knives in his hands ready to slice his victim into pieces, the convict was caught red-handed in the bloody act.

High Court Judge Dingiswayo Madise ordered that Kaumba be jailed for life on Wednesday for committing one of the worst crimes.

The ruling came at the end of a case in which Kaumba and Fiskani Mtambo were being prosecuted for coaxing 11-year-old Morton Juma, into a bush where they hacked him on the neck.

The murder of Juma was aborted when he shouted for help during the attack, and fortunately for him a mob appeared on the scene that apprehended the would-be murderers.

The court acquitted Mtambo because the state did not prove his involvement beyond reasonable doubt, but senior chief state advocate Dzikondianthu Malunda hailed the sentence meted out on Kaumba.

“With life imprisonment meted out to the convict, justice has certainly won,” Malunda told reporters outside the court. The boy with albinism, who survived the attack, was over the moon as Mzuzu Academy announced that it had offered him a scholarship. He dropped out of school for the fear of being abducted and killed.

As a matter of fact, the state cited the disruption of his education as one of the factors necessary for the judge to slap the convict with a stiffer punishment.

During the hearing, the prosecution said attempted murder was no different from cold-blood murder, as both were fuelled by the intention to kill and the victim did not survive by the mercy of his assailants but by chance and divine intervention. But in mitigation, defence lawyer Chimwemwe Chithope described the convict as a first offender, youthful, sickly and deserving of mercy, saying the offence was “a mere attempt”.

He asked the court to treat the attempted murder of persons with albinism like any other, based on the principle of equality before the law.

The judge, however, quashed the call for a lesser sentence by declaring that worst offenders deserved worst punishment. “Today I have that worst offender before me, who set out to kill Morton like a chicken or goat and he deserves stiff punishment,” he said.

The ruling cames a few days after Malawian President Peter Mutharika declared war against albino killers branding them as “terrorists”. — News24