Cult leader said to be hiding in Kenya

Xinhua News Agency / August 27, 2000

Uganda's fugitive doomsday cult leader Joseph Kibwetere is suspected to be hiding in western Kenya, the Monitor daily quoted human rights activists as reporting Monday.

Officials of Western Kenya Human Rights Watch (WKHRW) and the Uganda Human Rights Activists (UHRA) urged the Kenyan government to investigate Kibwetere's alleged presence in Kenya.

They said that followers of Kibwetere's Movement of Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God are infiltrating western Kenya in big numbers.

"Their followers are selling their plots and other properties in order to join the cult, saying that the world will end on December 31, 2000," they said in a statement.

The human rights watchdogs called on the Kenyan government to take stringent measures to prevent the recurrence of the March 17 Kanungu incident in southwestern Uganda where over 500 Kibwetere followers were burnt to death in a church inferno, said the report.