Kataribaabo's Passport Found
Africa News Online, New Vision, Kampala, May 23, 2000
By Patrick Mugumya
Kampala - The Police have discovered the passport belonging to Fr. Dominic Kataribaabo, one of the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, raising a possibility that he might be hiding in Uganda.
A Police source told The New Vision that the passport was found by a team investigating the cult whose leaders are believed to have killed over 1,000 followers.
The chief Police spokesman, Mr. Asuman Mugenyi, confirmed yesterday that the Police had Kataribaabo's passport.
"It's true we have his passport but I cannot reveal its number or any more details because it is now subject to more investigations," Mugyenyi said on telephone from Jinja.
But sources told The New Vision that the passport, which was issued in 1997, was only used once to travel to neighbouring Rwanda for two days in 1998.
A senior Police officer said the Police was not investigating possible links between the cult leaders and Rwanda. He said the discovery of the passport leaves three possibilities in the investigations: Kataribaabo might be dead, hiding somewhere in Uganda or has another passport, which he may have used to escape to another country.
Mugenyi refused to say what implications of the discovery of the passport might have on the cult probe, saying, "I don't want to give any blanket conclusions, let the investigators investigate." In another development, the first analytical report on the Kanungu inferno, in which hundreds of cult followers were massacred, says there was no sulfuric acid used contrary to previous reports.
Davis Weddi writes that the report, whose details were availed by the acting Director of the CID, Mr. Erasmus Opio, also says they found no sign of bombs or grenades used, but petrol was discovered in the ashes.
Press reports had indicated that it was suspected that sulfuric acid had been used in the fire. It was also reported that the acid could have originated from Kasese Cobalt mines where some had been reported stolen a few weeks before the incident.
Opio said the analytical report said the Kanungu church windows were bolted from outside and that the fire started from within the church.
Opio said the pathologists said those who were in the church died of neurogenic shock as a result of burns and that the fire was caused by petrol.
The pathologists also said most bodies retrieved from mass graves at the homes of some of the cult leaders had signs of strangulation while others had stab wounds and fractures in their skulls.
