Gulu attack: The unanswered questions

Kampala- The Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura, yesterday said the primary motive of the Sunday attackers on Gulu Central Police Station (CPS) was to rescue an Opposition politician incarcerated there last week.

Mr Dan Oola Odiya is a mobiliser for the Uganda Peoples Congress, and security agencies suspect he masterminded an attack, late in May, on a Local Defence Unit detachment in Gulu District. Those assailants killed two people and fled with guns.

Gen Kayihura repeated a narrative in a police press statement, issued shortly after the incident, that the Force knew nothing about the attackers. “We got intelligence that is why we deployed earlier,” the police chief said.

That is where the official account begins to raise more questions than answers, if not faltering altogether, considering that the gun battle lasted for at least half-an-hour, one soldier was killed when UPDF intervened to reinforce police and the attackers escaped unhurt.

Was police prepared?
Four other soldiers, two police officers and a civilian were injured. Police said they recovered six AK-47 rifles, a machine gun and 270 bullets at the scene besides two vehicles and motorcycles abandoned by the fleeing suspects.

The pattern of events leading up to, during and after the shooting did not show a prepared police, according to a highly placed security official.

Police and the military have in the aftermath contradicted each other on whether or not any attacker was killed, injured or captured, which is strange because the state security agencies had presumably equipped for them.
The army spokesman, Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, noted on his social media account that “three of the attackers have surrendered with two rifles”. None was paraded to the media as security agencies have done in the past.

Gen Kayihura contradicted that narrative at yesterday’s press conference attended by Lt Col Ankunda, by saying no arrests of the assailants happened.

In Gulu Town, about 300kms north of Kampala, the Aswa region deputy regional police commander, Mr Zata Aziku, told journalists that they were able to know the motive of the attackers when the suspects in police cells cheered that the onslaught was to rescue them. We could not independently verify this claim.

The contradictions
Mr Aziku did not say if UPC’s Odiya, a less known politician until his arrest last week, was among the cheerleaders that night or why anyone would have risked their lives to free him under a hail of bullets.

Another unresolved matter is if the police received prior intelligence, why didn’t the Force deploy adequately to intercept or ambush the attackers, decimate or arrest them? Why did the Force require military back up, resulting in the death of Cpl Moses Edema and other casualties?

The revelation
According to a security official who asked not to be named because they did not want to be seen contradicting the official position, a fierce shoot-out in a restricted and populated place such as a police barracks would inflict a heavy toll. The source also said with the benefit of a prior intelligence, police should have secured the station by closing off roads and deploying snipers and regular armed officers to promptly ward off the intruders, which did not happen.

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