ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) – Investigators have found 33 more bodies in woodlands near where a secretive cult is believed to have carried out ritual killings, police said Friday in raising the death toll in the case to 83.

In last week’s initial raids on homes and two forests in southeastern Anambra state, police found 50 bodies – some without heads – and about 20 skulls. The bodies, several of which were mummified, had been left unburied in caskets lying in what have been dubbed the two “evil forests.”

Police paraded five bedraggled men before journalists Friday in Abuja, the national capital, and lined up 20 skulls that officials said were found hidden in domestic shrines linked to the Alusi Okija cult.

Sunday Ehindero, the deputy inspector general of police, said the men were among 31 priests arrested in connection with the killings.

“The police are concerned with how these bodies found their way into the shrines. We want to find out who severed the heads from the bodies of those we found,” Ehindero said.

Some ritual killings in West Africa are carried out in the belief they bring wealth or success. Other rituals involve using body parts as traditional medicine.

Police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said all 31 prisoners had been moved to Abuja from the town of Okija in Anambra to avoid pressure from local people to recant their testimony about the cult.

Police believe some of the victims – businessmen, civil servants and others – were poisoned. The cult is believed to practice a ritual in which people involved in disputes, often over business deals, are made to drink a potion they are told will kill only the guilty. The potion itself was likely harmless, police say, but one of the parties would later be killed secretly by agents sent by the priests.

One of the five arrested men defended the cult practices.

“I have been with the shrine for the last two years and I have not seen anybody killed. Rather, it’s the shrine that kills. Nigerians know that the shrine kills,” said Collins Obi, who said he was a spokesman for the arrested priests.

Not only priests have defended the cult. Last week, the head of one of Nigeria’s main ethnic organizations, Ohanaeze, which represents the large southeastern Ibo group, criticized the police raids as an attack on Ibo culture.

“These things are part of Nigerian tradition,” Joe Achuzia said in the local press. “I do not see anything new about it except the police want to portray Ibo as criminals.”

AP-ES-08-13-04 1613EDT