Stench of murder hangs over new grave as toll rises

Digging bodies from a newly discovered mass grave yesterday, where more members of Uganda's doomsday Christian sect lie buried, prisoners with shovels and pickaxes wrapped makeshift pieces of gauze around their faces against the overpowering stench.

Digging bodies from a newly discovered mass grave yesterday, where more members of Uganda's doomsday Christian sect lie buried, prisoners with shovels and pickaxes wrapped makeshift pieces of gauze around their faces against the overpowering stench.

As the corpses were uncovered, the reek sent crowds of curious locals fleeing down the hillside. By late afternoon, the first layer of about 40 bodies were exposed, six feet below a sugar cane field behind self-styled Father Dominic Kataribabo's deserted house.

He was a leader of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, 600 of whose members burned alive in a church in Kanungu a week last Friday. A total of 74 more bodies, 26 of them children - some with ropes around their necks - were unearthed yesterday and grim excavation will continue today.

As rotting corpses were thrown to the surface by the barefoot exhumation party, let out of a local jail for the day, a doctor performed cursory examinations, flexing joints and checking decomposing mouths.

The doctor had no forensic experience, but he estimated they had been dead for about a month. Many had been hacked or stabbed. Others had been strangled with the ropes. Ugandan authorities, overwhelmed by what may yet become the world's largest mass murder investigation, now fear the cult leaders may have orchestrated the deaths of many hundreds more of their estimated 4,000 followers.

More than 700 bodies have been found at remote highland sites in south-west Uganda at branches of the Movement of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Last Friday, police found 153 strangled mutilated bodies in Buhunga, 30 km from Kanungu.

The killings appear to have been systematic, and may even have had a financial motive. The cult followers had signed over their possessions, but rebellious members had started looking for their money back when predictions that the world would end on 31 December did not materialise.

But the investigation is yielding few answers. Local and regional police, poorly resourced and badly co-ordinated, have wrecked forensic evidence while waiting for pathologists, detectives and forensic experts from Kampala. In Buhunga and Rugazi, exhumed bodies are being reburied as they are dug up, because there is no way to preserve them, or experts to examine them. Deputy Resident Commissioner Tumwine Polly said the murders were well-planned.

He gestured with an air of hopelessness as he stood next to the grave. "Freedom of worship has turned into freedom of murder," he said.

One of the main suspects, "prophet" Joseph Kibwetere, suffered physical seizures, said a priest who was a member. Father Paul Ikazire said he would, in anger, fall down shaking and rolling his eyes.

He said Kataribabo, owner of the Rugazi house, was highly educated and respected, but led an increasingly secretive life. Even his nephew next door, was unable to visit through the back of the house, where the bodies have been discovered.

Matting and fencing obscured the garden from the neighbours. A former prostitute and cult leader, Credonia Mwerinde spent much time in this house and kept strict control over members, who came in groups to the house for seminars and induction.

Fr Ikazire said members were subjected to hard labour, sleep deprivation, starvation and fasting, and no communication with other members or the outside world. Inside the death house, statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus still lie on a table in the living room.