An angry crowd in northern Cameroon reportedly stoned a man to death on Jan. 6 after he was found having sex with a 17-year-old boy.

According to an online account, apparently from the newspaper L’Actu, Lamine Goche was killed by a crowd after he was “caught red-handed” inside his shop in the Central Market of Maroua, Cameroon.

A wholesale medicine supplier, Lamine Goche was a Nigerian native and an Islamic teacher, an Oustaz, the “name given to one who has completed the study of the Koran.”

The crowd was alerted by a “street kid” shouting “Samaroka! Samaroka!” (the word for homosexual in the Fulfulde language).

His body was abandoned by the neighborhood’s Muslim traders, leaving it for Christians to bury.

The 17-year-old was reportedly taken to the district chief.

One merchant said of Lamine Goche’s sexual orientation, “We suspected for years. But Allah did not give us an opportunity to act. … Today Allah answered our prayers and we surprised him.”

Another merchant said no one had suspected his sexual orientation. “We had never seen him in action, especially because he was hiding beneath religious attire and pious behavior,” he said.

Merchants said they were especially angry with Lamine Goche because he described himself as a man of God, but gave himself over to homosexual behavior.

Human rights activists are trying to investigate the incident, which was reported to have occurred about 1,100 kilometers north of the capital city of Yaoundé.

The article about this incident was not available today on the website of L’Actu.

(This article was revised Jan. 9 to add a reference to the dead man’s Nigerian background, which had been omitted during translation from the French.)

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