Three arrested over car theft

KAMPALA. Three men are being held at the Central Police Station in connection with the theft of a car belonging to Mr Mark Robert Akabway, a World Vision official.
Mr Emilian Kayima, the Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesman, said Mr Moses Kalema, Mr Impala Lyente and Mr Patrick Ntambi, were arrested last Tuesday at Pakwach boarder point trying to sneak Mr Akabway’s car to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He said Mr Akabway reported a case of a stolen car at CPS and security personnel informed all border security teams.
“Mr Akabway’s vehicles went missing at around mid-day and he quickly informed us. We alerted our border security personnel who intercepted the trio at 1600 hours on the same day,” Mr Kayima said.

Mr Akabway had parked his vehicle at around 7:45am outside his office on plot 15B Nakasero Road. He realised the car was missing at 12:450pm when he moved out for lunch.
Mr Kayima called upon drivers to install tracking devices on their vehicles to make recovery easy.
“Had Mr Akabway not installed a GPRS in his vehicle, his car wouldn’t have been found. It is very difficult to recover a vehicle that has crossed to DRC because her security agencies are not cooperative,” Mr Kayima said.

Mr Asan Kasingye, the Director of Interpol, recently released statistics showing over 414 cars have been smuggled to DRC since 2011. He said the cars are smuggled through unrecognised border points with the support of senior army officers in DRC. This, he said was making it difficult for Uganda police to recover the stolen cars.
“The laws in DRC are very soft on cross border robbery and theft. This is because the criminals are supported by senior security personnel. They always tell us to compensate car buyers if we want to repatriate the stolen cars. That would be double payment for car owners in Uganda,” Mr Kasingye said while addressing the media at Interpol offices in Kololo recently.

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