Defilement suspect killed inside police cell, disguised as suicide

Two civilians walked to a police post, they were allowed into a cell and met a defilement suspect who shortly afterward was pronounced dead.

That was on January 24, 2014. Paul Opolot, 15, was accused of defiling a girl in his Kyere Sub-county in Serere District. Police pursued him on a Sunday; he fled into the bushes but was cornered and arrested.

It was while in a police cell that he got unannounced guests. On the fateful day, his 43-year-old mother Stella Achan paced restlessly outside the cell at Kyere Police Post, begging to speak to her son. Ms Achan’s insistence irritated a police man who whacked her unexpectedly.

She held fort, keeping within sight of the place where her son had been incarcerated.

A police officer stood at the doorway, observing what was happening both inside and outside the cell.

Then Opolot was announced dead --- just like that. Police claimed he hanged himself, but medical examinations showed different results.
The lapse of time has not healed the mother. Ms Achan choked on tears during an interview for this article about the incident that happened two years.

In the broader context of the random killings ravaging Teso Sub-region, however, Opolot’s killing weaves into a pattern of seemingly scripted extra-judicial executions fanned by a toxic cocktail of impunity clothed in state protection garb.

At 8am on the fateful day, Mr Leonard Okiria, the Akisim Village Local Council I chairman in Kyere Sub-county, informed Ms Achan that her son was in police hands to answer defilement charges. The mother claims the alleged victim was 18, three years older than the alleged suspect. Was defilement then a cover up?
She dashed out of church and in a few minutes was at Kyere Police Post.

“I found the Gombolola Internal Security Officer (GISO) and parents of the girl at Kyere Police Post. I knew the mother, Ms Betty Atyang, because she was a nurse at Kyere health centre. They were let in while I was told to remain outside,” she narrates. She was perplexed and asked the officer to let her in, if only to show support to her son.

An unnamed doctor was summoned ostensibly to carry out an on-site HIV test in the police cell. The results were negative. At 1pm she was ordered to bring lunch for the son and when she returned to the police post, she was instructed instead to surrender the food to the supposed defilement victim whose parents were still inside the cell with the suspect.

Mr Geresem Okello, 25, an Information Technology specialist and brother to the deceased, recounts that “we heard the father of the girl ordering the boy to bend. James Ajotu, the CID officer, was there. The GISO David Ekellu, [the alleged victim’s mother] Atyang, [the girl’s father and ruling NRM party mobiliser] Moses Okwi and Ajotu remained at the doorway. It was half open.”
A few minutes later, a police man walked to Ms Achan and said: “Your son has committed suicide.”

She broke down in disbelief. After regaining some fragile composure, she informed relatives who trooped to the police post in numbers, wailing, and forced their way into the cell.
A police officer pulled out his gun and threatened to pull the trigger, but they could take no more of the intimidation. He retreated.

The teenager had been detained in that cell alone.
An analysis of the deceased’s photograph taken shortly after the alleged suicide showed a rope knotted to his neck and tied to a timber on the window frame while his feet touched the floor, an unlikely posture for one to die when hanging self.
And the report of a post-mortem done at Soroti Regional Referral Hospital showed otherwise.

The pathologist noted that the deceased could not have hanged himself because the eyes were not protruding as would be expected, the tongue remained normal and nothing on the body pointed to asphyxia.

Mr Okwi and his wife fled the village amid imminent retaliatory attacks by the teenager’s relatives.

A stone-pelting irate crowd pursued them in their new lair.
He reportedly drew a gun and fired some shot in the air to scare the rampaging attackers, and sped away with his wife.

The source of his gun and bullets puzzled the villagers. Some residents told this newspaper that past insurgency in the area --- from the National Resistance Army bush war to the 1987 Peter Otai-led Uganda People’s Army (UPA) rebellion and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) incursion countered with a local militia, the Arrow Boys --- left illegal weapons in hands of several people.

One Intelligence officer, whom we cannot name because he is not authorised to speak to the media, told this newspaper that: “We don’t know how many guns are out there, but we know the villages and people who are reasonably suspected to have guns [although] sometimes operations to seize them are thwarted by our superiors who have interest in this anarchy. Some of these people help them in their land grabbing schemes and during elections.”

Late Opolot’s family telephoned the then Serere District Woman MP Alice Alaso and she connected them to Uganda Human Rights Commission and local human rights defender, the Soroti Development Association and NGOs Network better known by the acronym Sodnan.

At this point, said Mr Okello, a brother to the deceased, Serere District Chairman Joseph Okojjo “reached out to us, asking us to accept compensation because we couldn’t manage a battle with the family of our brother’s killers”.

An LC 1 chairman was arrested in connection with the incident and pressure continued to pile. The family got another offer, this time of ten cows and Shs7 million, according to Mr Okello.
The district chairman declined to speak to this newspaper when asked about this incident.

According to Mr Okello, “attacks started; we had to subject ourselves to curfew. You would get home and see a man or two with a gun at between 7pm and 8pm”.

Mr Siraje Okello, a neighbour who witnessed the boy’s battering during arrest said he too has received anonymous death threats as does Mzee Benjamin Atuket, the leader of the Irarak clan.
The first attack, to the best of their recollection, captured in a notebook reads April 4, 2014. The second came on June 27, 2014. These were physical threats, but there were also veiled references to plans to wipe out the family.

The woman who took part in the police cell operation was arrested, but the husband fled and was only arrested mid last year.
The suspect reportedly enjoyed a military protection and, at one time, was sighted being guarded at a football match at Mandela National Stadium Nambole, east of Kampala, by two men.

He is also alleged to have as a patron a senior presidential advisor from western Uganda, whom he allegedly helped during the 2011 and 2016 elections by brutalising his opponents.

There is evidence of this in the election petition, Alice Alaso vs Hellen Adoa and the Electoral Commission, which the former won in the High Court before the Court of Appeal reversed that victory last month.

High Court judge, Justice David Wangutusi, while annulling the election last year, on among other grounds alleged fraud, accepted evidence of the army’s deep involvement in that election and the violence meted against Ms Alaso’s supporters.

A 20-minute recording of a telephone conversation in Ateso language between a mobiliser and one legislator from Teso captures a plan to unleash violence in the area at election time.

Opolot’s killer was allegedly a mobiliser to a Member of Parliament and a lackey for the ruling party candidates at presidential and district chairperson elections.

Intelligence briefings tie the killings in Teso Sub-region to business and political rivalry as well as excesses of rogue security officials in high positions.

“If a politician wants to protect a killer who helped them with terror during campaigns, they will compromise all institutions,” one detective familiar with the cases said.

The principal suspect in Opolot’s killing was later arrested in an operation led by Mr Okello Obura, the then East Kyoga CID chief, from Sports View Hotel in Kireka, hundreds of kilometres away from Soroti.

The detectives created a decoy by masquerading as potential buyers interested in his Raum car. Two escorts dressed in army fatigue reportedly accompanied him, but after ascertaining that the covert operation was being commanded by a senior police officer, the guards withdrew.

One of the suspects, Oluka, a staff at Kapeta Health Centre III in Serere District, was released last month after two years on remand. Seven other suspects, including two police officer and Giso, parents of the alleged defilement victim, remain in jail pending hearing of their case by the High Court where they have already been committed.

Months later, Mr Obura was arrested and is still being tried by the police court, including on one offence relating to his meeting, in the company of the then Internal Affairs minister Rose Akol, with First Lady Janet Museveni whom he briefed about the still unpunished brutal killing in Bukedea District on March 11, 2016 of septuagenarian Mary Opus.

Police allege that Mr Obura met a person of higher authority without his superiors’ permission or clearance.

In the fifth instalment tomorrow of our series, Blood, Guns and Politics in Teso, our Reporter IVAN OKUDA investigates how justice has eluded a widow whose son police alleged shot dead after failing to retrieve an illegal gun they alleged he possessed.