Museveni renews order to fingerprint army guns

President Museveni has renewed his directive to have all guns in the hands of the army finger-printed.

The Commander-in-Chief first gave the orders five years ago as part of security measures he unveiled in 2018 at the height of rampant killing of notable citizens.

Among the victims killed between 2015 and 2018 were then Arua Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga, former police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi, former Buyende District police commander Muhammad Kirumira and Muslim clerics.

Fingerprinting the weapons, according to Gen Museveni, would ease identification of guns used to commit crime by comparing retrieved spent cartridges with records of the gun in the system. 
 Whereas other armed services such as police and prisons have largely complied, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has stalled in executing the directive.

Insiders said the military has been wary that fingerprinting guns in its possession could boomerang because killings by soldiers deployed on foreign assignments could be traced back home, helping enemies of Uganda to build a case against the country.   

In addition, the army worried that collected data could land in the wrong hands. 
“The fingerprinting of the guns of the security forces are helping to curb gun violence, but I hear they didn’t include the army. Why not the army? I have directed that all the army guns must be fingerprinted like all the others were fingerprinted,” President Museveni said yesterday.
 He made the comment while presiding at the pass-out of 2,234 Uganda Prisons Service (UPS) officers at Kololo Independence Grounds in Kampala. 

President Museveni’s renewal of the directive follows the fresh rise in gun violence, some involving security personnel.   Suspects in some of the crimes, including the May shooting dead of Vlogger Ibrahim Tusubira, alias Ibra Olaxess, have not been found despite detectives recovering shells of bullets from the scene of crime in a city outskirt. 

Highly-placed sources said a breakthrough has been stymied by the fact that no data on the used weapon exists in the security records.  

Some of the latest crimes, among them the shooting dead of IBC Advocates employee Ronnie Mukisa, at his home in Wakiso District’s Makindye-Sebagabo Municipality in May, have been linked to the army. 

UPDF soldiers; Cpl Max Goefrey Anyase and Sgt Ayubu Rashid Okot, and former Kampala Metropolitan North Deputy Police Commander, SP Vincent Irama, and his brother and businessman Robert Irama Karedou are being prosecuted at the military court over the murder.

In a 2021 story titled, UPDF decline to fingerprint guns, this newspaper chronicled the military’s anxieties about fingerprinting guns since its personnel, both soldiers and covert operatives, possess the biggest number of guns and operate both within and outside the country.

To allay those fears, the President in yesterday’s renewed directive said data collected on fingerprinted army guns should be stored by the military, not regular,  police. 
“They can be kept separately, maybe under Military Police, but they should be finger-printed, he said, “Every gun should be fingerprinted.”

The latest rise in cases of gun violence has made the call by the Commander-in-Chief more urgent, according to human rights activists, who argue that fingerprinted guns would, for instance, have made it easy to identify soldiers who shot dead at least 54 civilians while suppressing the November 2020 pro-Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, protests in and around Kampala.

Latest gun crimes involving UPDF officers
August 1: UPDF officer in Kitgum District shoots wife dead before turning gun on self.             

July 13: Soldier under UPDF Mountain Division Signal Department kills two colleagues, 

injures another.

July 17: A soldier shoots a civilian dead in Kapchorwa District.                                                           

May 2: Guard Pte Wilson Sabiiti shoots then State Minister for Labour, Col (rtd) Charles Okello Engola, dead.