Image- executing 'Killers' of Irish Priest in Uganda

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday March 27, 2002 20:34 by joram joram at ourplace dot com

An officer blew a whistle to mark the beginning of the firing. The soldiers then ran and took position 10 metres away from their target and began shooting. A Captain later shot Mohammed in the head at close range after a medical officer established that his heart was still beating. O’Toole who turned 32 on March 17, postponed his birthday celebrations to March 24. He did not live to see the day.

THE execution of two UPDF soldiers over the murder of an Irish priest in Kotido on Monday has been condemned by local and international organisations as a possible “cover-up.”
In Dublin, the Irish Aid Agency (GOAL), in a report quoted by The Irish Times, urged their government to withdraw the Irish ambassador from Uganda and cut aid, in protest to the summary execution before a 1,000-strong crowd.
Cpl James Omedio and Pte Abdullah Muhammad were executed for murdering the Rev. Fr. Declan O’Toole 31, the driver and his cook, last Thursday.
Mill Hill Missionaries to which O’Toole belonged, said on Tuesday that the executions was reminiscent of the ancient principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Yesterday, fellow missionaries repeated concerns over both the speed of the trial-which does not allow for appeals-and the execution.

“This is revenge. It is not what Declan would have wanted,” said Mill Hill Missionary Father Brendan Jordan. He said a court martial did not allow for a full investigation of the circumstances surrounding the killing.
“When there is no transparency you don’t know if they have got the right people,” he said.
The Irish embassy in Kampala also conveyed its “unease” to the Uganda government.
The Irish envoy to Uganda, Mairtin O’Fainin, yesterday told The New Vision that he had raised the matter with Uganda’s foreign affairs ministry.
“As a matter of policy we are opposed to the death penalty. It would have been better to have full investigations,” the envoy said.

Father Joe Jones, a bursar with Mill Hill Missionaries in Dublin, told the Irish Times, “Definitely there was undue haste. It all seems too opportunistic and we have to ask if these two men were scapegoated.”
He said everybody wanted to see justice being done but he didn’t know if the right men were found guilty.
“We would like to see due process being followed, but we object to the death penalty and we wouldn’t like to see reprisals. But there is nothing you can do from here if a government like that decides that is how it will show the world it means business,” he said.

UPDF spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza, however, said, “If we had spent two years, they would have said we are hiding something. Let them not tie our hands. The field Court Martial is a fast process.”
He told the Irish paper that the soldiers confessed to the crime, saying they did it for material gain.
The paper said just 12 days before his death, O’Toole was assaulted by a soldier after complaining about the army brutality against villagers during the disarmament process.
“A soldier came up with a stick and lashed me across the back. Meanwhile, four others were ready with sticks if I resisted, but I just left the scene to the sound of their laughter,” he reported to his superiors by e-mail.

A statement from the Mill Hill Missionaries office in Kampala condemned the summary executions and urged “the Government to order a full investigation to elucidate the circumstances of the crime.”
Newspapers in Ireland and Britain also carried stories of the executions.
The missionaries said there was strong suspicion that the late O’Toole “may have been a victim of some form of army revenge,” saying the priest had witnessed and complained of army brutality against civilians in Nakapelimoru village in Panyang’ara parish in Kotido district.
GOAL’s chief executive John O’Shea said the Irish government should also cease all official involvement with “one of the most repressive regimes in Africa.”
“The fact that these men were taken out and put up against a tree and shot dead stinks. It is a case of dead men tell no stories,” O’Shea told an Irish Independent newspaper.
UPDF’s third division commander Col. Sula Ssemakula who presided over the field court martial, was quoted as saying, “There is overwhelming evidence and thus you are charged with the murder of the Rev. Fr. O’Toole.”