APA-Kampala(Uganda) Ugandans will on Wednesday, March 17 mark ten years since a religious cult in Western Uganda caused death of over 1000 followers.
The cult, known as Restoration of the ten commandments was led by a former school teacher and church leader, Joseph Kibwetere with the help of a priest, Dominic Kataribaabo and a former bar maid Cledonia Mwerinde
The cult based in Kanungu district near Uganda’s south western border with Eastern DR Congo, is said to have locked the believers in a huge church hall before using petrol to set it on fire.
The cult leaders had been preaching the end of the world come the year 2000 and had convinced the believers to give up all their possessions as they awaited the second coming of Jesus.
The government of Uganda set up a commission of inquiry and aggressive search for the cult leaders but since then no arrests have been made and the special commission set up to probe the incident has never carried out the assignment.
The Uganda Police say they had not made any progress in their investigations because they were waiting for the findings of the probe commission.
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“The commission of inquiry set up to investigate the incident and make recommendations, which the Police would have acted upon, has not handed in any report,” Edward Ochom, the Director of the Criminal Investigations Department, told Sunday Vision.
On March 17, 2000, hundreds of members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments were locked up in a makeshift church and set ablaze. What initially seemed like a mass suicide turned out to be premeditated killings that shocked the world. A total of 530 bodies were counted after the inferno.
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