This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

Up to 1,000 Gambians have been kidnapped by "witch hunters" and forced to drink hallucinogenic potions at secret government detention centres, according to Amnesty International.

The purge, which had been sanctioned by the country's controversial president, Yahya Jammeh, has already caused two deaths, while hundreds of people have fled in terror to neighbouring Senegal.

Victims say that the police, army officers and members of Jammeh's presidential guard, known as the "Green Boys", have been accompanying the witch hunters from village to village in recent weeks.

The alleged witches, many of them elderly, were abducted for up to five days. Made to drink unknown hallucinogenic substances, they were then forced to confess to witchcraft. Some were also severely beaten.

The witch hunters are reported to have arrived in Gambia from Guinea earlier this year, following the death of Jammeh's aunt. He is said to believe that witchcraft was used to kill her.

The Gambian government has not commented on Amnesty's report of its involvement in the purge.

The latest incident is reported to have occurred in Sintet village in the Foni Jarrol district on 9 March. One witness told Amnesty how paramilitary police armed with guns and spades had surrounded the village at 5am, forcing 300 men and women on to buses that took them to Jammeh's farm in nearby Kanilai.

"Once there, they were stripped and forced to drink dirty water from herbs and were also bathed with these dirty herbs.

"A lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhoea and vomiting whilst they lay helpless."

Belief in witchcraft is not uncommon in parts of rural Africa. Alleged witches may be hounded out of villages, or even killed, but rarely is the state involved in such events.

The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said the campaign was "spreading terror throughout the country" and should be immediately stopped.

Jammeh's crackdown is in keeping with the strange and dangerous beliefs he has recently imposed on the tiny West African state, which he has ruled since launching a military coup in 1994.

In 2007, the 43-year-old president announced that he had found separate herbal cures for HIV, asthma and high blood pressure, and personally administered his treatment to patients.

Last year Jammeh vowed to execute any homosexual discovered in Gambia, and earlier this month he imprisoned the opposition leader Halifa Sallah on spying charges, for visiting some of the villages where witch hunting had occurred.