Indiscipline ‘to blame for killings’

Barracks commander says deaths should not be linked to frustration in the army as some sources have indicated

The Army leadership at the Land Forces General Headquarters in Bombo has linked the 12 registered murder cases that occurred last week in two separate incidents to individual indiscipline.

According to the Camp Commandant Bombo army barracks, Brig. Hussein Adda, individual cases of indiscipline are to blame for the incidents in which Pte. Simon Peter Otenyan shot dead Capt. Michael Ssekito and Sgt. Michael Okot at the barracks. He said the incident occurred after a verbal argument.

He added that the shooting to death of five soldiers and civilians outside the barracks could not be termed as frustration within the army as an institution. Two soldiers are still on the run after committing the different crimes.
“These are cases involving individual indiscipline and not frustration as some of you are saying. We have now got the accounts on how the two separate incidents happened which all reveal indiscipline, which we are seriously addressing”, Brig. Adda told journalists on Monday in Bombo.

He added: “It is not true that we have arrested any of the two who are still on the run. We managed to recover the gun abandoned by Pte. Otenyan outside the Barracks.”

The army has contributed Shs2 million as burial expenses and Shs150,000 for grave digging and construction while the welfare for both the civilian and soldiers’ orphans will be taken over by the UPDF.

Meanwhile, the two people who were injured in the Friday night shooting at a bar in Bombo Town, have been discharged from hospital. Ms Joyce Asiyo and a 12-year-old boy were on Monday discharged from Bombo Military Hospital after medical workers said their lives were out of danger.

They will, however, remain monitored according to Capt. Stanley Malisaba, the Publicist at the Land Forces General Headquarters in Bombo.

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