_WORLD WATCH______________________________
____________________ UGANDA ________________

Summary justice
Quick executions after a priest’s death
An Irish missionary priest working in Uganda was shot and killed in March —shortly after the release of a report in which he had blamed the Ugandan army for the proliferation of weapons in a strife-torn area of the African country.

Father Declan O’Toole was shot at close range in an ambush along the road near his parish. The East African Standard reported that two companions were discovered in the car, bound and gagged, some time after the killing.

Father O’Toole had served in northern Uganda since his ordination in 1997. On March 18, he had released a report on the rise of violence in the northern region where he served. He had claimed that despite an official government policy favoring disarament of the tribes in that region, military officials had been selling weapons to the residents.

Just one week after the priest’s death, two Ugandan soldiers were executed after a court-martial convicted them of the killing. At a whirlwind trial in the town of Kotido, the two soldiers reportedly entered guilty pleas, and the military court sentenced them to death. As a large crowd looked on, the two soldiers were tied to a tree and executed by a firing squad.

Spokesmen for the Mill Hill missionaries in Uganda protested the “hasty” executions. The statement from the missionary order suggested that the summary execution may have been designed to curb further investigation of military involvement in the priest’s death.

The missionaries’ statement also pointed out that since Father O’Toole worked for justice, “the summary execution of the alleged perpetrators of murder, seemingly without due process, flies in the face of the very principles he stood for.”