Posted March 23, 2017 20:43:28

Photo: Correctional Service officers escorting some of the 99 accused onto a bus. (ABC)

Ninety-nine men have appeared in court in Papua New Guinea to stand trial for the brutal killing in 2014 of five men and two children they believed were conducting sorcery.

The mass trial actually has 122 defendants, but one has since died and only 99 appeared in court in Madang this week.

The prosecution alleges the men, from a small village in the Rai Coast area, formed a faction known as "Houseman" for the purposes of finding and killing people suspected of sorcery.

In a statement of facts tendered to the court, the prosecution said the men then raided their village in search of sorcerers to kill.

"They painted their faces with black ashes, armed themselves with bush knives, bows and arrows, hunting spears, [and] home-made and factory-made shotguns," the statement said.

"They were unstoppable, uncontrollable, very aggressive and violent.

"They went on a rampage, destroying food gardens and setting alight about 62 houses."

The men are then alleged to have killed five men they encountered while raiding the village, shooting them with arrows and hacking them with machetes.

One of them was then thrown into a burning house.

The men are then alleged to have killed two boys, aged three and five, by slashing them with machetes.

The statement of facts said both boys were snatched from mothers and killed in front of them.

The defendants were on bail but have now been taken into custody ahead of their next appearance in court.

The trial is set to continue in April.

Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, witchcraft, religion-and-beliefs, community-and-society, papua-new-guinea