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Terror scare: CMI hold 2, doctor on the run
Police arrested the suspects in raids on Independence Day and October 10 but turned them over to the army’s investigative agency ostensibly because exhibits recovered, including guns and bullets, were of military nature. PHOTO/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
What you need to know:
- The arrests, hailed within security circles as a major breakthrough, came in the wake of rising urban crime.
The Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) has taken over cases of two men who police separately arrested over allegations of terrorism and illegal possession of guns and bullets.
One is a 50-year-old man, whom investigators said hails from Moyo District while the other is an ex-employee of Jet-tech Security Uganda Ltd, a private security firm, and a resident of Kansanga in Kampala.
Preliminary inquiries showed the latter individual is currently an officer-in-charge of armoury at one of Uganda’s biggest private security companies, and vends its arsenal to raise money for personal use.
Highly-placed sources said police and the army were last evening hunting a doctor that one of the suspects identified as the owner of the recovered weapons.
Detectives said the suspects, whose names we are withholding for legal reasons pending their arraignment in court, were picked up after informers tipped police at Kira Division headquarters in Kira, Wakiso District, and officers at Kira Road Police Station in Bukoto, Kampala.
Kira police received the alert as celebrations to mark Uganda’s 60th Independence anniversary got under way, and the undisclosed informers reportedly said they had sighted a man in their Namugongo neighbourhood in possession of multiple guns. They believed he planned to terrorise, local council (LC) official said, quoting some residents.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Kampala Metropolitan Police (KMP) spokesman, Mr Patrick Onyango, while describing the suspect as a “terrorist”, noted that “the security team searched [his] house in the presence of the area LC [chairman] and his defence [secretary] and various deadly arms were recovered.”
Weapons recovered in the raid in Namugongo, according to police, include two AK47 and one pump action rifles, sub-machine gun magazines loaded with 270 ammunitions, and 25 locally-made pump action bullets and gadgets.
Investigators reported finding nine bottles of unknown chemicals they classified as “deadly” and a sachet of Kugina Spice alongside 15 empty shells of tins “suspected to be for making bombs.”
Police on October 13, 2022 display some gun magazines that the suspect was allegedly carrying in Ntinda, Kampala. PHOTO / ABUBAKER LUBOWA
We could not independently verify the accounts as witnesses of the raid declined to speak. Detectives last evening marked up the recovered exhibits before turning the suspect over to CMI, the investigative arm of Uganda’s military, in their words because the “evidence recovered was of military nature”.
“The suspect [in the Kira case] is still undergoing interrogations so as to get more information on how they acquired the said rifles and being tasked to reveal his associates and where they are keeping other weapons,” Mr Onyango noted in yesterday’s statement.
The operation in Namugongo in Kira Division was followed a day later, on October 10, with a tip-off by a senior official of Jet-tech Security Uganda Ltd, a private security firm headquartered on Martyrs Road in Ntinda, a Kampala outskirt, that a former employee had reached out to them, offering to supply bullets at a fee.
The official, whose name we are withholding for his safety, notified Ntinda police, who in turn advised him to lure the ex-employee to visit with samples of the bullets.
Not knowing that undercover agents were in place, the suspect turned up with 30 bullets and was immediately arrested. He told police he had access to the ammunitions and guns in his capacity as the in-charge of an armoury for a non-state security firm.
Items recovered
The revelation prompted police to raid his home in Kirombe Village in Kansanga, a city suburb, where they reportedly recovered 107 bullets (eight for a pistol and the rest for the more modern CO3 gun), firing pin, trigger mechanisms and four empty pistol magazines.
Other items include 27 gun butts and 14 gun buttstocks, six pairs of new uniforms of his employer, four bayonets, a UPDF helmet, one machete, and 20 sand papers.
Police were due yesterday to turn him into CMI custody for further interrogation and onward prosecution for alleged Illegal possession of firearms and ammunitions.
Brig Christopher Ddamulira, the police director for crime intelligence, told this publication that they were due to undertake an inventory of armouries of private security organisations “to ensure that there is full accountability for the weapons that they hold”.
“I implore the police officers on the ground to work together such that they can curb the criminality in Uganda, especially Kampala metropolitan areas (the capital, Wakiso and Mukono districts) where criminal elements are many,” he said.
The October 9 and 10 arrests, hailed within security circles as a major breakthrough, came in the wake of rising urban crime marked by attacks orchestrated by iron-bar hitmen and gunmen who target their victims on the streets, at homes and in neighbourhoods.
There have been cases of day-time abductions by armed men in the city, the latest victim being a Pakistani national.
