Colombian chef Oscar Rosas once had everything going for him.
But after falling into the hands of a notorious criminal gang, he claims he was held captive for three years and forced to cook human flesh for drug lords and international criminal gangs.
Rosas, now 61, completed his culinary training in New York and spent most of his 30s in Europe, cooking for some of the world’s best restaurants.
But despite his success, Rosas says his life was spiralling out of control, and a devastating heroin addiction would ultimately cost him everything.
With his career in ruins and nowhere else to go, he decided to return to Colombia, with nothing to his name and struggling with relentless substance abuse.
He moved to the notorious ‘El Bronx’, a lawless slum in the heart of Bogotá that was at the time one of the country’s most dangerous open-air drug markets, controlled by dealers, hitmen, prostitutes and heavily armed criminal organisations.
It was there, in his most vulnerable state, that Rosas claims he fell into the hands of Los Sayayines, a brutal gang that operated as the neighbourhood’s enforcement arm.
What followed, according to Rosas, was a descent into a world of underground tunnels, satanic rituals, organ trafficking and unimaginable brutality.
Oscar Rosas pictured during his time as a chef
The now 61-year-old said a heroin addiction led his life to fall apart. He is pictured in this undated photograph in the depths of his battle with a heroin addiction
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Rosas has described how he was forced to prepare human flesh in the form of a stew for underground dinner parties attended by bloodthirsty international criminals – and how for three years, he had no other choice than to participate in cannibalistic rituals.
While living on the streets of El Bronx, Rosas says he would take up any job to help him fund his addiction.
So when the Sayayines offered to employ him as a cook for a dinner party in exchange for heroin and crack, he couldn’t resist.
El Bronx was built on top of a labyrinth of secret underground tunnels and alleyways connected to dilapidated buildings, where criminal groups carried out their dealings.
He was told the dinner party would be held underground, and that high-profile gang leaders would be among the guests.
‘They had silverware, and good wines and champagne. They said they were bringing guests from all over the world. I said I’d make them whatever they want, and they said they would pay me back in heroin,’ he recalls. ‘They got me everything I needed.’
But what he didn’t realise was that once he went down into the tunnel, he would be held captive and forced to endure something so hellish and evil that he interrupted this interview to pray before he could keep going.
‘I went down into the tunnel, and there was a beautiful woman to my left. She was holding a dead chicken, and she wiped its blood on me and threw snails on me,’ he says.
Rosas has been sober for 11 years and runs a rehabilitation facility for drug addicts in Bucaramanga, Colombia
As he helplessly stood there, scared and confused, a member of the Sayayines ran towards Rosas and started punching him.
‘I said, ‘What are you doing? It’s me; you told me to come’, and he said, ‘I don’t care who you are; you are never getting out of here,’ Rosas recalls.
‘He told me I had to perform a satanic ritual, and if I didn’t, they would kill me.’
Suddenly, people started descending into the tunnel, muttering words he couldn’t understand.
‘They made me pick up a plastic bag full of meat they brought down with them and put it on the dinner table.
‘I grabbed it, I opened it, and they made me serve its contents on a gold platter.’
But as he began taking the meat out of the bag, Rosas says he felt sick to his stomach as he realised what was happening.
‘They were human remains,’ he recalls.
‘I turned around and said, “Brother, you’re crazy; how can you think I am going to cook this.” And he grabbed me and pointed his gun at my head and said, “You cook it, or we will eat you”.’
Rosas knew he had no other choice. ‘I felt like throwing up…I just remember putting the knife into that dismembered body, and prepped it as it were for a stew…It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,’ he says.
‘I survived the first ritual…They made me take a bite….and for the next three years all I ate was human meat,’ says Rosas.
‘They wouldn’t let me eat anything else. I had no other choice. I had to do it.’
‘And every day there was a ritual…And they’d ask me to remove someone’s kidney…in exchange for crack’.
He explains that every few days, men in coats would arrive with big suitcases, and they’d take the organs Rosas was forced to cut out of human bodies with them.
‘There was organ trafficking going on; it was the most horrible thing,’ he says.
‘Everyone who was down there would also eat the human bodies…they did it as a ritual, to protect their souls…by kidnapping their souls…’
‘People who did it were members of the guerrilla, paramilitaries, thieves, international criminals, drug dealers and powerful gang bosses’
‘International criminals from all over the world would come to eat human flesh…in the form of a stew.’
‘In that slum, we were never short of dead bodies,’ he adds. ‘Some days we had seven or eight bodies coming through.
‘Sometimes they had been killed, others died of drug overdoses, some were members of the police…,’ he recalls.
‘I lived my life that way for three years…I was desperate; I just needed to get out.’
After more than 1,000 days in captivity, Rosas says he felt like he had no other choice than to end his life, and attempted to commit suicide with a broken glass bottle.
‘As I bled, I heard people saying to prepare an acid bath to put me in, but one of the Sayayines grabbed me and led me out of the tunnel, and dumped me on the street.’
Rosas says he doesn’t know why the man chose to save him, but his living nightmare was far from over.
He was seriously injured, so when police found him, he was rushed to hospital.
But as he recounted to doctors what he had endured for the last three years, his account was so unfathomable that he was sectioned in a mental health ward.
‘No one believed me; they thought I was crazy,’ he says. ‘I contemplated suicide….I didn’t want to face reality, plus, no one believed me.’
But he says he was given a new lease of life when a group of Christian volunteers started visiting him in hospital.
Pictured: ‘El Bronx’, a lawless slum in the heart of Bogotá that was at the time one of the country’s most dangerous open-air drug markets
In 2016, more than 2,500 cops and heavily armed soldiers removed over a thousand homeless people and addicts from the slum, and rescued around 130 minors
Police search imhabitants of El Bronx during a raid in 2016
Police officers stand in the area known as El Bronx in downtown Bogota, Colombia, Monday, May 30, 2016
‘They would sit with me, they would pray with me, they taught me about God,’ he says, explaining he has now chosen a religious way of life. ‘I still have my demons, but I finally feel peace.’
It has been 11 years since his hellish ordeal ended, and Rosas, who has been sober for the same amount of time, now lives in the central city of Bucaramanga, where he has opened up a rehabilitation facility for people battling addiction.
Shortly after he escaped El Bronx, the dangerous slum was dismantled by police.
In 2016, more than 2,500 cops and heavily armed soldiers removed over a thousand homeless people and addicts, and rescued around 130 minors, many suspected to have been used as child prostitutes.
Special forces at the time confirmed dozens of arrests were made, and large amounts of cocaine, marijuana and crack were seized.
Authorities also uncovered a 100-metre-long hidden tunnel running under a building overrun by squatters, which they said was used by criminal gangs to smuggle drugs, weapons and kidnapping victims in and out of the neighbourhood.
For years, stories of cannibalism and satanic rituals in the Colombian slum were disregarded as an urban legend.
But earlier this year, the then-head of judicial police Juliana Quitana confirmed that there was enough evidence to suggest that murder victims in El Bronx had been used by criminal gangs to ‘feed homeless people’ and ‘lure foreigners with cannibalistic tendencies.’
Dining and Cooking