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KAMPALA – Cannibalism may be repugnant to
wider society, but that does not mean that it is against any Ugandan law,
police have said.
Although they
have confessed to cannibalism, police spokesman Assuman
Mugenyi told The Monitor yesterday that Mr James Kityo, Mr Rogers Kitumba and Ms
Harriet Namboga did not break any laws of the land.
The three
suspects were netted in Mityana on Sunday.
“There is no law against cannibalism in Uganda,”
Mr Mugenyi said.
“If you find human flesh in a supermarket, you are free to eat.”However, Mugenyi
said that there is a law against exhuming dead bodies.
“They
can be charged with trespassing on burial grounds because you must have a
court order to exhume a body,” he said. Meanwhile, police have moved
the three suspects to Mubende for fear that
residents might overrun Mityana Police Station and
lynch them.
“We
brought them here on Monday evening because we feared mob justice,” Mubende District Police Commander Ponsiano
Barisigara told The Monitor yesterday.
Police in Mityana, who are handling the case, are investigating
whether the suspects murdered their victims. “They claim they were
getting the dead bodies from different sub-counties, so we are establishing
whether they killed them or they exhumed dead bodies,” Mr Tarquins Alawy,
the officer in charge of Mityana police, said by
phone yesterday.
Police exhumed
the remains of the confessed cannibalists’
victims that included two decomposing bodies and three skulls at their home
in Kinvunikidde village in Mityana
on Monday.
“The
task we have now is to move the suspects to the areas where they claim they
exhumed the bodies, then we shall ask relatives if
they lost such people. We shall then ask them to dig up the graves, to
establish whether their dead are still in there,” Alawy
said.
Barisigara said the suspects were doing well in
the Mubende cells. Asked about the reaction of
other prisoners the police officer said, “Normally we don’t tell
other prisoners the crime of their fellow inmates, but they were locked up
with murderers; can a murderer fear that a cannibalist
will eat him?”
For now, they
are restricted to the bland prison diet of posho
and beans.
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