Leader of the Shiite Muslim sect in Uganda Sheikh Abdulkadiri Muwaya was bent on doing what the Quran tells every Muslim to do – spreading Islam. Many who knew Sheikh Muwaya say he devoted his energies on promoting Islam and thought every Muslim would support that mission. Unfortunately, some saw his unwavering efforts towards elevating Allah’s message as a threat. They saw him as a man who was spreading the Shiite brand of Islam at the expense of the majority Sunni faithful in Busoga sub-region. They plotted to brutally stop him forthwith. So the plot was hatched. It had the ringleaders and the operatives.

Salim Yahaya, one of the accused, says he was contacted by certain prominent Sheikh in Busoga to execute the mission. Although Yahaya believed that Sheikh Muwaya had crossed the red line in his spread of the Shiite Islam teachings, he didn’t think of death as the option to counter the sheikh’s moves. “At first, I disagreed with him that it was wrong to kill Sheikh Muwaya just because he was preaching Shiite beliefs to Sunni Muslims but he insisted. He promised me Shs40m to carry out the mission. For sure, I needed money but I had no means to carry out the attack,” Yahaya narrated to the Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura and the Director of Criminal Investigations and Intelligence, Grace Akullo, at Nalufenya Police Station in Jinja on Thursday. With mixed feelings, Yahaya says, he looked for another person who could execute the mission. Top on his list was Ali Kabambwe, a former Allied Democratic Forces rebel, whom he knew had a rifle.

When Yahaya met Kabambwe and briefed him about the deal and how much he would be paid if the mission was executed, Kabambwe accepted with a few conditions. He needed his clients to buy him a truck which he would use to earn daily income after completing the mission. The deal was sealed.

Kabambwe hit the ground running

For nearly a week up to the Christmas Eve of 2014, Kabambwe would visit the scene where he was to launch the attack and studied Sheikh Muwaya’s movements around Buyemba village in Mayuge Town. The assassination stage was set. At around 5pm on Christmas Day, Kabambwe got in touch with his friend, a boda-boda cyclist, whom he had worked with on other similar missions. “We were around the area. I saw him [Muwaya] going to the mosque and then getting back to his home. We sat at the veranda and he was on phone. That is when I walked in with my rifle and shot him,” Kabambwe narrated. Kabambwe jumped onto the boda boda motorbike and fled the scene immediately. An alarm went out, the villagers streamed in and the compound filled. Police were called in but the detectives were too inexperienced to realize that the assassin was highly skilled in weapon handling. Their superiors too, took it as the usual homicide cases motivated by property or family wrangles. However, President Museveni was shocked by the killing and the motive. He suspected something more amiss than the ordinary killings that happen now and again around the country. “They told me that the man has many wives and wrangling between his family members could have led to his death,” President Museveni said when he visited Busoga sub-region recently.

The disunity

The police remained clueless on the motive of the killers. Though Muslim rivalry between the Sunnis and Shiites are tense in the Arab world, in Uganda their differences have remained just latent with hardly any noticeable animosity. Given the fact that the ADF rebel group had previously operated in Busoga area and that some sheikhs, including Muwaya had opposed its rebellion, detectives suspected that the rebels could have carried out the killings in retaliation. When the pressure from police headquarters subsided, the local police relaxed, and so did the killers. Seeing no one pursuing him, Kabambwe started looking for more homicide deals. After successfully executing the mission, another deal from a person, whom the police are still investigating, came his way. Another prominent person was placed on the hit list. Buyinja Sub-county Local Council 3 Chairperson in Namayingo District, Tito Okware, was the next target. “I was promised Shs2m if I killed him. I was given the money and I oiled my gun, did what I often did before carrying out an attack and waited near his home,” Kabambwe recounted to the Police at Nalufenya Police Station in Jinja. Unlike the previous Muwaya elimination, this time Kabambwe had to be extremely fast and cautious because Okware’s home was near a police station. Kabambwe, in his own words, said after carrying out a reconnaissance on Okware’s movements, he discovered that he rarely made solitary journeys whether during day or night. The only place to get him was his home whose risks were too high to bear, being near a police unit. Nevertheless, Kabambwe chose to give it a try. In the evening of February 1, at around 7.30pm, Kabambwe boarded a numberless motorcycle with two colleagues and rode to Namayingo Town.

Executing the mission

They lurked and waited until Okware entered his home. They struck. “He was seated with his family but I had been told to shoot only him. So I pulled out a rifle and shot only him. I jumped on the motorcycle and we took off,” Kabambwe stated. The gunmen again got the police unawares. The police reaction was not any different from their previous response after the killing of Sheikh Muwaya. The Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura, had had enough of this chain homicide. He replaced all the police commanders in the region with a new team. The new team was under firm instructions to track the killers. A joint command comprising the army, police and intelligence agencies was set up. Investigations began. Police sources say they looked into the old files to see suspects they had investigated before and how they had been conducting their lives. As the joint investigation team continued their surveillance, Kabambwe and his accomplices had got used to their game and little worry of getting detected. But they had run short of bullets.

Kabambwe says free bullets could be easily acquired from reckless police officers or buying them on the black market at a high price. Kabambwe did not have the money to buy the bullets on the black market. Plan A had collapsed, so he went for Plan B. He would move around the police station to see how the district police commander deployed his officers and how they moved to their beats. Not a single officer realized they were being monitored. Like a group of lions spotting a vulnerable prey among a herd of buffaloes, Kabambwe identified susceptible cops. Karim Tenywa and Muzamiru Babale, armed with AK-47 rifles rode bicycles to their guard base at Justice Faith Mwondha’s home, a few miles away from the police station. Kabambwe realized the two cops could not shoot while riding. He also observed that the officers went to their beat late in the evening and would return very early in the morning, but would ride through uninhabited places. If an ambush was laid, it would be a perfectly executed with minimum margin of failure. Early in the morning of February 15, 2015, Kabambwe made an ambush in uninhabited area. He lurked in the bushes until he saw the cops riding back to their station.

“I put them on target. I didn’t see any noticing that they were in danger. I shot one after another and they both fell down motionless,” he recounted without remorse. He ran to the scene, picked their guns and made off with them. “I knew that they were innocent, I just needed bullets from them,” Kabambwe said. None in the neighboring villages heard the sound of the gunfire and the police only got to know about the issue when a passer-by found the officers dead and reported to the station. Kabambwe and his group’s armory had now raised seven guns and more than 100 bullets. What they didn’t know was that the intelligence unit had already gathered information about them and their movements through their telephone communications. Using the technology and phone data about the suspects’ past, detectives were able to track them. Acting commissioner in charge of organized crime, Francis Olugu, said when the suspects were arrested and taken through what they thought they were hiding, they started cooperating. Kabambwe took the detectives where he had hidden the guns at a primary school in Bugiri District. “We hid the guns at that school because the Director of the school is our friend and a friend to (Jamil) Mukulu,” Kabambwe told police and journalists in Jinja on Thursday. Kabambwe and Yahaya were among a dozen suspects who were presented before Jinja Chief Magistrate’s Court on Thursday last week and charged with murder. They were remanded to Kirinya Prison in Jinja.

Legally speaking

Murder is an offence under the penal code act of Uganda section 188 which states that any person who of malice aforethought causes the death of another person through an unlawful act or omission commits murder The punishment for the offence of murder is provided for under section 189 of the penal code act which states that any person convicted of murder shall be sentenced to death (this being the maximum sentence). So from the facts above Kabambwe and Yahya are liable for murder as co offenders.

Section 19(2) of the penal code act is to the effect that any person who procures another to do an act which if he would have done personally would amount to a crime is also guilty of that offence, so Yahya is as liable as Kabambwe for the offence of murder since he procured Kabambwe to carry out the offence.

A confession can be admitted in court as evidence of the guilt of an accused but it must have been made willingly without any form of force or coercion and it must have been made before an officer above the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police or a magistrate. The accused must have been informed about the effect of his confession (charge and caution statement) so that the accused is all aware of what he is doing. That’s confession can be used as evidence against him and Kabambwe but caution must be taken by courts since Yahya seems to put most of the blame on Kabambwe.

This article is courtesy of The Daily Monitor and edited by Advocate Ricky Mudali