A man accused of torturing and drowning a teenager he believed to be a witch told the boy's father that he would kill him, a court heard today.
Pierre Bamu told a jury at the Old Bailey that Eric Bikubi had told him to come and collect his son Kristy or he would end his life.
But the boy's father did not take the threats seriously because Bikubi, his daughter's boyfriend, was a kind person and so close to him that he called him Dad, the court heard.
Pierre Bamu said: "The Eric that I see over there and the Eric that I knew then, it's the same difference as night and day.
"He was a well-respected lad and he never called me by my first name, he called me Dad."
Kristy and four of his siblings had gone to stay with their sister Magalie Bamu at her flat in Forest Gate, east London, in December 2010.
It is claimed that Magalie Bamu and Bikubi began accusing them of witchcraft, and beat Kristy and two of his sisters.
Kristy was attacked with weapons including a hammer and weight bar before he drowned in a bath.
Today his father told a jury that he had spoken to Magalie Bamu on Christmas Day.
"She said 'Dad you've got to pick up the children because they're witches and you're a witch too'," Pierre Bamu told the court.
Speaking through a French interpreter he said he then had a conversation with Bikubi.
"He said 'You've got to come and pick up the children, you've got to pick up Kristy because he's a witch and he's practising witchcraft on (another child of the family)'.
"He said 'If you don't I'm going to kill him'.
"When he said that, I wanted to say something to him, then straight after that I heard Kristy's voice.
"Kristy was talking in a calm voice. He wasn't crying. He just spoke to me in a voice like we're using now. 'Dad come and get me or otherwise Eric will kill me'. And then the telephone was cut off."
Pierre Bamu borrowed 1,000 euro from a friend and tried to hire a car to drive to England from his home near Paris, but all the car hire firms were shut because it was Christmas Day.
He eventually decided to come to England the following Monday because he could not believe that Bikubi would harm his children.
He said: "When Eric said that, knowing Eric as I do I said 'It's not going to come to that because he's a nice person, a really nice person'."
Bikubi, 28, of Hathaway Crescent, Newham, east London, denies murder but admits manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as well as two counts of actual bodily harm on two of Kristy's sisters.
Magalie Bamu, also 28 and of the same address, denies murder and two counts of actual bodily harm.
The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.