When on Sunday, 19th January 2014 shocking photographs emerged of a cannibal by the name of Mad Dog real name Ouandja Magloire eating the flesh of a lynched Muslim man for the second time in as many weeks in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The question on everyone's lips was, why?
Magloire told a BBC reporter that his action was revenge for the murders of his pregnant wife, his sister-in-law and her baby. He claimed that Muslims were responsible and he was angry with them. 'They broke down the door and cut my baby in half. I promised I would get my revenge... I poured petrol over him. I burned him. I ate his leg, right down the white bone.'
‘Mad Dog’ had earlier spotted his victim on a minibus and followed him after deciding he looked Muslim. He gathered a crowd of about 20 Christian youths who forced the bus driver to stop and dragged him from the bus. AP says, the men were killed by residents of the Sango neighbourhood in revenge for the lynching of a taxi driver from Sango a day earlier.
Two other Muslim passers-by escaped to the protection of French and African peacekeeping forces.
Though Magloire didn't take part in the killings, he turns up in the aftermaths.
The European Union has agreed to send up to 1,000 troops to the region to help restore order.
The mission, which will deploy in and around the capital and last up to six months, is expected to involve a force numbering between 400 and 1,000.
The troops will help back 1,600 French soldiers and the African Union's MISCA force, which currently has 4,400 troops on the ground.
International donors also pledged $496 million (£302 million) in aid to the country this year.
Earlier in the month horrific footage emerged from Bangui of Magloire eating the leg of a Muslim who, according to the BBC, was hauled from a bus, battered and then stabbed before being set on fire.
Witnesses did not intervene but recorded the footage on mobile phones, including the act of cannibalism.
A video shows his cheeks bulging as he consumes the flesh.
Witness Jean-Sylvestre Tchya told news agency AFP: 'One of the individuals took hold of an arm and went and bought some bread and starting chewing on the flesh, along with his bread.
'The scene made many people vomit, and some cried out in horror.'
Another witness, Alain Gbabobou, said he watched a man wrap the head up and proclaim that he would 'feast on it'.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, this may not have been an isolated incident, with a source speaking of more than one person being eaten.
An aid worker told the paper: 'They were taking machetes to people and burning the bodies and eating them.'
Samba-Panza's election comes 10 months after the Seleka rebels overthrew the country's government and installed their leader, Michel Djotodia, as the majority-Christian country's first Muslim president.
But Djotodia proved powerless to control his fighters, and many went on a rampage of killing, rape and looting targeting the Christian majority.
Some Christian communities responded by forming self-defence militias and attacking Muslims. Both sides are accused by rights watchdogs of major abuses, and the United Nations has warned of a potential inter-religious genocide.
Djotodia stood down under international pressure on January 10.
So far it has claimed around 1,000 lives, with the reports of cannibalism bringing to mind the macabre tales associated with Jean Bedel Bokassa, who ruled the CAR with an iron fist between 1966 and 1979.
He was regarded by many as a brutal dictator and was accused of eating human flesh, incorporating it in meals for visiting officials and feeding slain opponents to animals.
He died in 1996 and received a posthumous pardon in 2010.
Some Christian fighters believe that human flesh makes them invincible and put chunks inside amulets that they wear.
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