OWN CORRESPONDENT, Mbarara, Kampala | Friday 6.30pm
OVERWHELMED Ugandan police appealed for help from abroad to investigate the grisly deaths of up to 800 people from a religious cult gone amok in the southwest.
“To the best of my knowledge, we have a low capacity. We are not able to handle cases on this level. We are overwhelmed. We are not able to cope,” the head of the Criminal Investigations Department Erasmus Opio said.
“That is why I would welcome any foreign assistance. We would be very willing to receive any help from abroad on this case,” Opio said. Almost 800 members of the doomsday cult known as the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God were killed steadily over several months in southwestern Uganda, cumulating on March 17 in a massive fire at a church in Kanungu, in which some 400 followers perished.
The death toll could still rise further as investigators are to travel on Friday to Kyata, near Fort Portal, to search another property owned by the group. Also on Friday, the head of Uganda’s main psychiatric hospital, Fred Kigozi, said that cult leader Joseph Kibwetere was hospitalised there for some time before he was released in 1998.
Local media reports said earlier this week that eight foreign countries, including the United States, have offered to help investigate the killings, but Interior Minister Edward Rugamayo said that he has not been informed of any international offers.
Ugandan police have also reportedly issued five international arrest warrants for leaders of the cult who, according to some witnesses, may not have died in the March 17 fire, but Opio denied that report. The Ugandan police force has only one pathologist for the entire country, and he is now trying to establish the cause of death of the hundreds of people who were murdered between two weeks and two months ago, and buried in at least five places.
On Thursday, police at the site of cult killings in the village of Rwoshojwa said that they will soon have to return to the capital Kampala because they were running out of funds. — AFP