Soldiers face trial for murder of Irish priest

Two Ugandan soldiers could face the death penalty if found guilty of the murder of an Irish Catholic priest during an ambush just kilometres from his parish in the Karamoja subregion, northeastern Uganda. "A field court martial has already started at the locality, and is being overseen by army lawyers appointed by the Commander-in-Chief [President Yoweri Museveni]," Ugandan army spokesman Shaban Bantariza told IRIN on Monday. The soldiers are accused of shooting dead Father Declan O'Toole, his driver and a passenger in an ambush as they travelled along the Moroto-Kotido road, at around 6 pm local time on Thursday 21 March. According to Bantariza, O'Toole was just a few kilometres from his parish of Panyangela, near Kotido, when the attack took place. Bantariza told IRIN that, if found guilty, the two men could face execution by firing squad. "According to our laws, the sentence for murder is death," Bantariza said. "They would put the boys on a tree and shoot them." The two Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) soldiers were named by The New Vision government-owned newspaper as Corporal James Omediyo and Private Abdullah Muhammad. Armed cattle raiding by Karamojong pastoralists in the northeastern districts of Kotido and Moroto, has made the area one of the most insecure in Uganda. The insecurity caused by such raids has caused the displacement of some 80,000 people to "protected camps" in neighbouring Katakwi District alone, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in October 2001. A two-month arms amnesty in Karamoja expired on 15 February, after which the UPDF began a forcible disarmament campaign to recover an estimated 30,000 illegal guns still in circulation. O'Toole had been beaten earlier in the month by government soldiers, after he accused them of using excessive force while searching residents of Panyangela for weapons, the BBC quoted local media as saying. According to Bantariza, 1,153 guns had so far been recovered since 22 February, in addition to the 7,676 handed in during the period of voluntary disarmament. On 6 March, Uganda's newspapers reported the deaths of the chairman of Kapedo sub-county in Kotido District and a prominent businessman, allegedly beaten up and tortured by Ugandan soldiers, who wrongly accused them of not surrendering their arms. The New Vision quoted Ael Ark Lodou, an area MP, as telling news reporters in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, that the bodies of the two "prominent people" had been recovered on 25 February in Ugandan army trenches. The Ugandan army said at the time that four security personnel had been arrested in connection with the incident. The strength of UPDF forces deployed in the disarmament exercise meant the Karamojong were unlikely to forcibly resist removal of their weapons, Bantariza said on Monday. "They cannot fight us, we have too many soldiers. A whole division of several thousand soldiers is being used," he said. "The disarmament programme is going on well, everyone is cooperating. In a few months, I think it will be over," he predicted.