Dar Es Salaam - A Tanzanian court on Tuesday sentenced a 50-year-old man to death by hanging after being convicted of murdering an albino girl in 2008, an official said.
The man had been accused of hacking off the limbs of a five-year-old albino girl and drinking her blood, an act associated with ritual killings of albinos in the east African country in the belief that it brings luck.
"Witnesses told the court that the accused chopped off the child's legs at midnight and drank her blood," said Ayubu Mwenda, a court prosecutor in Tanzania's northern region of Mwanza.
Tanzanian laws impose death by hanging for people convicted of murder and high treason, however, nobody has been hanged since the mid-1980s.
Four suspects were sentenced to death in November for the murder of a 10-year-old albino boy.
The wave of albino killings started in 2007, fuelled by the sale of their highly-prized body parts to witch doctors who use them to concoct wealth-enhancing charms. - Sapa-AFP