UGAZI, Uganda - Authorities investigating the deaths of hundreds of followers of an apocalyptic cult suspect they were killed when they began to doubt their leaders' repeatedly postponed predictions of the end of the world and demanded their money back.
Police discovered a third mass grave yesterday, and by day's end had pulled the bodies of 28 people, including three children, from beneath a recently poured concrete floor in the home of Dominic Kataribaabo, a defrocked priest who was one of the cult's leaders. At nightfall, searchers were smashing through the floors of other rooms in a search for more victims.
On Monday, police had dug up the bodies of 77 people from a field behind Kataribaabo's house. Earlier, police found 153 bodies buried in the village of Kahunga, near where a fire 12 days ago engulfed about 400 members of the sect who had crammed into a church in what was first thought to be a mass suicide.
The discovery yesterday of the third mass grave in southwestern Uganda raises the number of people thought to have been killed by the cult leaders to close to 800.
Police investigators believe another 200 people who were in the church compound at the time of the blaze are also dead, their bodies still missing, along with hundreds more members who were until recently bound by blind obedience to leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
The leaders, whose whereabouts remained a mystery, had prophesied that the end of the world was imminent. But over a period of eight years since the initial prediction for 1992, they repeatedly postponed the date, most recently to Dec. 31.
Investigators suspect that when that date came and went uneventfully, some members who had patiently endured a strictly regimented life in the group rebelled. Many had sold their properties to join the cult, and wanted their money back.
''When you compel someone to sell their land at 4 million Ugandan shillings,'' or $5,400, ''that's a lot of money,'' said the Rev. Paul Ikazire, an 84-year-old Catholic priest who left the cult after four years in 1994.
''When I saw they wanted to make their own religion, I said, `No, I am a Catholic priest, I cannot separate from the bishop and the pope,''' Ikazire said at his house, less than a mile from Kataribaabo's house.
Most of the 77 victims found Monday behind the house had been strangled or poisoned, said Dr. Thaddeus Barungi, chief pathologist.
The house was surrounded by throngs of curious neighbors, who said they were at a loss to explain how so many people could have been killed and buried without anyone knowing. One of those watching was Kataribaabo's brother, Harrison Oryanawe, whose house stands no more than 60 feet from the grave. ''He was a humorous man,'' Oryanawe said of his brother. ''I never imagined this.''
Ikazire did. After dropping out of the group, he said, he observed the cult's practices and turned over his findings to Catholic Church authorities, who condemned the movement, defrocked its leaders, and forbade Catholics to join them.
But cult leader Joseph Kibwatere, who claimed he was getting messages from Jesus, nevertheless attracted a following of 4,000 people, by the estimate of a parliament commission.
Cult members ate little, prayed incessantly, fasted twice a week, woke up at 3 a.m. every day, and were not allowed to read books or listen to music or the news. The only permissible communication was sign language, said Ikazire, and the message had to be brief.
''Now we can see that it was premeditated and planned,''
said Polly Tumwine, 38, the deputy district commissioner for the province of Bushenyi, where the latest bodies were found. ''People were not allowed to communicate. Jesus had ordered you don't compare notes.''
But eventually, they did compare notes. Faced with demands to repay the money followers had turned over to him, authorities believe, Kibwetere enlisted his closest partners, among them a former prostitute, Celedonia Nweride, and set about killing the dissidents.
The discovery of more bodies yesterday lent new urgency to a nationwide search of suspected grave sites. Cult leaders had branched off from their headquarters at Rukungiri, not far from the church in Kinungu, and set up several communes. Five communes were targeted by police for immediate searches, along with the private properties of the cult's leaders.
The first indication that the deaths were murder, not suicide, came with the discovery of six bodies in a pit latrine outside the church in which more than 400 died on March 17. The stomachs of three had been cut open, and the others had been stabbed or their skulls had been crushed.
Because the bodies of neither Kibwetere nor Nweride were found in the ashes of the church fire, authorities believe they might be in hiding.
Ikazire described Kibwetere as an intolerant, temperamental man who suffered epileptic seizures. ''I remember once, in church, there were children playing and he went to them in a rage, but he fell down,'' Ikazire said. ''He was on the ground for one, maybe two minutes.''

Kampala, Uganda- Joseph Kibwetere, a failed Ugandan politician, led his disciples to a grisly mass death apparently because he believed the world was about to be destroyed for not obeying the Ten Commandments.
[Yesterday, police were still not sure that Mr. Kibwetere, a former assistant inspector of Roman Catholic schools was among those who perished in the fire at his church Agence France-Presse reports.]
The 68-year old self-styled bishop of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten commandments of God had been a prominent member of the Roman Catholic-based Democratic Party in the 1960s and `70s.
But his political career ended abruptly when the rival Ugandan People's Congress of ex-dictator Milton Obote won a controversial general election in 1980.
Mr. Kibwetere, a wealthy dairy and poultry farmer and a devout Catholic, was hounded our of his home district of Ntungamo in southwestern Uganda, taking refuge with an Anglican bishop in the nearby town of Kabale.
Seven years later at a time when many people in the Kabale area reported seeing visions, Mr. Kibwetere claimed to have overheard a conversation between Jesus and the Virgin Mary-and recorded it on tape.
It was to be the basis for last Fridays' mass death when, according to initial reports, hundreds of Mr. Kibwetere's followers boarded themselves in their church in the remote town of Kanungu in south-western Uganda, sang chanted for several hours, then set the building on fire.
"There is a lady's voice on the tape which says the world is suffering because the people are not following the Ten Commandments," said Sister Stella Maris, a Catholic nun living near Kanungu. " She says the commandments must be enforced or the world will end."
However, as searchers found more bodies around the church this week, speculation increased that many of the dead were murdered rather than willing participants in a mass suicide.
Mr. Kibwetere, joined by two former Catholic priests and a nun who had left their church, formed the sect in the late 1980s and moved to an isolated town in the lush green hills of southwest Uganda.
Marcellino Bwesigye, whose late father was a contemporary of Mr.Kibwetere, hosted the sect leaders at his Kampala home for several nights late last year.
"Kibwetere was a hard-working, enterprising man, but a terrible conservative in his religious beliefs," Mr. Bwesigye told Reuters. " He was a Catholic who wanted to be more Catholic than the pope."
His austere beliefs were reflected in his movement.
Dressed in green, white or black robes, his followers were told to live strictly by the commandments and communicate with each other only in gestures unless there were praying or singing. They had little contact with other residents of Kanungu except to sell their homemade crafts.
Sect members were required to sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the church.
"They gave all their money to the leaders who they say filled sacks with dry banana fibers in imitation of currency notes and burned them," Paul Kweisgabo, a local government official told Reuters.
It is not clear where the money ended up.
Mr. Kibwetere had at first predicted the world would end on Dec.31, 1999.
When he was proved wrong, he and his associates apparently came under increasing pressure for a now-destitute congregation to repay their money.
"That's when they hatched this new date of March 17th, district administrator Kalule Ssengo told Reuters.
Sect members on buses and trucks started making their way to the groups compound several days before March 17.It was only those in the church who would be saved, they were told, while the rest of the world would face God's wrath. Uganda's state-owned New Vision newspaper quoted Mr, Kibwetere's son, Maurice Rugambwa, as saying his father surely went to his death with his followers.
Misguided martyrs
The restoration of the Ten Commandments of God sect, hundreds of whose members died last Friday as fire consumed their locked and boarded church, is just one of several east African groups with apocalyptic overtones.
In Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as in Uganda, the synthesis of Christianity and traditional African religions, partly as rejection of the so-called "Western Churches," gave rise to millenarian Doomsday sects as the year 2000 approached.
Examples:
The Lord's Resistance Army, an offshoot of the violent Holy Spirit Movement of the 1980s, maintains an armed struggle in northern Uganda to overthrow the government and restore the Ugandan people on the road to faith, according to its leader, Joseph Kony.
The Holy Spirit Movement was spawned in the Acholi territory of northern Uganda, where war and political killing had ravaged society for nearly tow decades. Prophetess Alice Lakwena, a devout virgin who claimed to bring messages from the spirit world, opposed the new government after the President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, overthrew dictator Milton Obote.
She gave her warriors oil to smear on their skin to protect against bullets and many died before she fled to Kenya in 1987.
The World Message Last Warning sect, made up of Tutsis and Bahimas from southern Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo, had been accused of kidnapping children and sexual abuse of minors before authorities raided its base, a farm in central Uganda, last September.
Ugandan riot police dispersed an illegal November gathering of 500 people in western Uganda, where prophetess Nbassa Gwajwa, 19, preached to her Hima and Tutsi faithful. She claimed to have died in 1996 before being sent back to Earth by God to preach repentance to her people before the millenium.
In Rwanda, Doomsday sects and groups promising collective redemption also flourished as 2000 approached. Following the 1994 genocide, the number of Christian "churches" mushroomed from eight to 300 under the religious tolerance practiced by the new Rwandan regime, says Andre Karamaga, a president of Rwanda's Presbyterian churches.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) -- President Yoweri Museveni on Thursday blamed the AIDS epidemic and rural unemployment for the rise of religious sects in Uganda, where hundreds of members of a doomsday sect died in a deliberately set church fire.
Museveni said he was appointing a commission of inquiry into the fire last week that killed at least 330 people, including 78 children, outside Kanungu, a rural trading center 215 miles southwest of Kampala.
"There are quite a number of these groups," Museveni told reporters. "When people have no answers, they start looking for answers in metaphysics ... for answers in the supernatural."
"By vigorously promoting investment (in rural areas) we will be able to provide solutions to some of these frustrations, but not all," he said.
While Uganda has seen dramatic economic revitalization in recent years, poverty remains widespread. The country has also been devastated by AIDS. On Thursday, international donors meeting in Kampala agreed to continue $800 million in annual aid.
Museveni did not elaborate on the country's other fringe religious groups.
One, a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army, is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in northern Uganda and the abduction ofchildren. It grew out of a religious fringe group called the Holy Spirit Movement.
The March 17 fire was set at a makeshift church belonging to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The estimated death toll in the blaze has ranged from 150 to 600, and the cause has been attributed to gasoline, a bomb or both. There have been conflicting reports about the willingness of some sect members to commit suicide.
Museveni told reporters there had been two investigations into the movement since 1994. While the first investigation found nothing worrisome, the second, by internal security officers, said the group was a security threat.
However, he said that report was passed to an official -- reportedly a group member -- who may have covered it up. He did not say when the second inquiry took place.
Minister of State for Regional Cooperation Amama Mbabazi, who visited Kanungu on Wednesday, said two top sect leaders may not have died in the inferno as had been believed.
Cledonia Mwerinde, 40, the former prostitute who founded the movement, and Joseph Kibweteere, 68, who was also known as the prophet, may both have left the compound before the fire.
Mbabazi said a 17-year-old cult member who had slipped away from the church before the fire said Kibweteere was not there at the time. The minister said some local residents had also reported seeing Mwerinde leave the compound.
Police initially said all the group's leaders had died, but officials said later that only two leaders' bodies had been positively identified -- the manager of the sect's farm and "a priest." A number of the group's leaders were former Roman Catholic priests, lay workers and nuns.
Uganda's ill-funded and under-trained police force has been overwhelmed by the investigation, and many questions remain about what happened in Kanungu.
Various reports put sect membership anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 in nine districts in Uganda, a country of 21 million. It was a legally registered as a non-governmental organization.

KAMPALA, March 23 (AFP) - Suspicions about the "funny behaviour" of Uganda's doomsday cult were raised as early as in 1994, President Yoweri Museveni said Thursday, announcing a commission of enquiry into the deaths of hundreds of its members.
"There were apparently two reports about funny behaviour of this group," Museveni said at a news conference.
The first was made in 1994 by the resident district commissioner (RDC) of the area in southwest Uganda where the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult was based.
Last Friday, at least 330 members of the cult, including 78 children, died in a fire in a makeshift church in their compound in the village of Kanungu.
The RDC's critical report "went to the Non-Governmental Organisations board (which) sent investigators to look into the behaviour of this group. But they said these are just religious people, there is no problem. So the NGO board registered them," Museveni said.
More recently, Museveni said, without specifying the year, an internal security officer reported sect members were a security threat.
The assistant resident district commissioner "did not pass it on. We are now hearing stories that he himself may have been a member of that religion," Museveni added.
"This was not a complete security failure but information was not utilised fully," Museveni said.
The president added that a commission of enquiry would be set up to investigate the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult and other groups.
This would be headed by "someone of very high calibre," said Museveni.
He went on to rule out a blanket ban on cults, saying boosting development in the country would reduce impoverished Ugandans' dependency on "metaphysics."
"There is a big gap between the elite and peasants. I don't know if it's really correct to ban all religions. New cults are not traditional, but sometimes they try and mix Christianity with traditional religion," he said.
"People start looking for answers in the realm of metaphysics because there is no answer in real life. That's why my line has always been that we must now move rapidly to industrialise the country," Museveni said.
"By vigorously promoting investment we'd be able to solve some, but not all, of those frustrations... In the long run, transforming the country through education and employment will uproot all of them," he added.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A young member of a Ugandan doomsday cult says he saw the sect's leader flee before a fire in which more than 500 cult members died, newspapers have reported.
But police said they had no evidence that the 68-year-old self-styled prophet Joseph Kibwetere was still at large, and had not yet launched a search.
A 17-year-old named Ahimbisibwe told the New Vision newspaper he saw Kibwetere and his deputy, former prostitute Gredonia Mwerinda, leave the compound before dawn on Friday carrying small bags.
"Kibwetere and Gredonia prayed for us on Thursday night and they left the camp," said the boy, whose mother and sister were among the victims of the fire in the cult's barricaded church in the remote town of Kanungu.
Ahimbisibwe said he had left the cult's hillside compound early on Friday to search for food, and had come back to find the church full of burned bodies.
The area's member of parliament, Amama Mbabazi, who is also minister for regional cooperation, said he believed the leaders had survived.
"My gut feeling is that Kibwetere and his colleagues are on the run," he told the New Vision after laying a wreath at the site on Wednesday.
The blaze initially looked like a mass ritual suicide, although police are treating the deaths of at least 78 children as murder.
PRESIDENT DEMANDS PROBE
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Thursday ordered an inquiry into the tragedy, saying warnings that the sect was dangerous had been ignored.
A recent intelligence report concluding that the extremist Christian group was a "threat to security" was not passed to higher authorities by the local district commissioner, Museveni told reporters.
Museveni also said there would be an inquiry into a police investigation that has been criticised as cursory.
Police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said discounted speculation that Kibwetere and other leaders were still alive.
"I really doubt whether this man is still alive -- I don't think there is anywhere he could get sanctuary after committing a crime like that," he said.
While the body of Dominic Kataribabo, another of the cult's leaders, was officially identified by police at the site, the bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave on Monday, effectively destroying any remaining evidence.
Police initially said Mwerinda's body was also among the dead, but have since admitted they had not been able to identify her.

CIP (22.03.2000)/DHSF (23.03.2000) - Le Mouvement millénariste de Kanungu a été créé vers 1990, et le P. Tomaino a bien connu ce phénomène religieux. Missionnaire combonien, il a été pendant plusieurs années curé dans les diocèses de Kabale et de Mbarara, dans le sud de l'Ouganda. De passage en Italie, il a été interrogé par l'agence missionnaire italienne Misna.
Un homme tellement distingué
" Le fondateur du "Mouvement pour la Restauration des 10 commandements de Dieu", un certain Joseph Kibwetere, a été enseignant et catéchiste pendant plusieurs années, a-t-il précisé. Il s'était tellement distingué qu'il avait même été nommé responsable du Conseil paroissial de la mission de Kagamba, dans le diocèse de Mbarara. Il m'a dit qu'il avait eu une vision divine et qu'il avait compris que sa mission serait celle de rétablir les Dix Commandements. Au début, il forma un groupe de disciples, dont 3 prêtres et des jeunes filles. Leur fanatisme se révéla lorsqu'ils prétendirent avoir eu des révélations personnelles de salut, que Dieu leur demandait d'annoncer au monde. Le message le plus troublant fut celui du rapprochement de la fin des temps. Cela eut inévitablement des retombées pratiques sur la vie des gens subjugués. Par exemple, selon eux, il était inutile d'envoyer les enfants à l'école ou au travail parce que désormais, l'heure de la fin était arrivée. "
Selon le Père Tomaino, le mouvement avait pour épicentre de diffusion la région de l'Ankole. " Ils se sont introduits graduellement dans chaque paroisse, en particulier dans la province de Bushenyi, où ils ont recueilli des fidèles à cause, entre autres, du peu d'importance attribuée au phénomène par les autorités ecclésiastiques. L'un d'entre eux m'a dit un jour que le groupe avait des contacts avec un mouvement intégriste australien. On a même dit que certains leaders avaient passé plusieurs semaines en Australie pour les leçons de spiritualité. "
Un tournant
" Le tournant s'est produit entre 1993 et 1994, estime le missionnaire italien, quand le mouvement s'est transféré dans la localité de Kanungu, dans la province de Rukungiri (région de Kigezi), où ils ont acheté une vaste parcelle de terrain et construit leurs structures. Tous les adeptes de cette secte s'y sont installé avec leurs enfants, après avoir vendu leurs terres et tout ce qu'ils possédaient, offrant le bénéfice des ventes à leurs chefs. Ils ont commencé alors à prêcher ouvertement que la fin du monde était proche et qu'il ne restait qu'à attendre ce jugement dans la pénitence. Les autorités locales ont manifesté leur inquiétude face à ce phénomène, mais elles n'ont pu l'enrayer. Il est un fait que les adeptes ont été enregistrés comme "ONG" ou "confession religieuse" reconnue par l'État, je ne me rappelle pas bien. Certaines personnes quittèrent cependant la secte car la fin du monde ne semblait pas arriver. "
Le Père Paolo Tomaino pense que la thèse d'un suicide collectif n'est pas du tout crédible. " Pour le moment, dit-il, je ne dispose pas d'informations directes, étant donné que je me trouve en Italie pour une période de repos. Mais je peux imaginer les pressions psychologiques que les adeptes ont fait endurer à leurs leaders. Au fond, tous ces gens avaient mis entre les mains de ces chefs toutes leurs richesses, en attendant le jugement universel. Ce jugement ne se réalisant pas, on ne peut exclure que quelqu'un ait pensé éliminer physiquement la secte entière et s'enfuir avec l'argent. Sans aucun doute, il s'agit d'un acte de folie, une folie qui nous laisse tout de même effarés. "

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - The Ugandan government will set up a commission to investigate the deaths of hundreds of members of a religious sect who burned to death last week, as well as other similar fringe groups, President Yoweri Museveni said today.
``There are quite a number of these groups,'' Museveni said at a press conference, noting that high rural unemployment and a staggering AIDS rate had left some Ugandans searching desperately for solutions to their problems.
``When people have no answers, they start looking for answers in metaphysics .... for answers in the supernatural,'' he said. ``By vigorously promoting investment (in rural areas) we will be able to provide solutions to some of these frustrations, but not all.'' Museveni did not elaborate on the country's other fringe religious groups.
One, a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army, is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in northern Uganda and the abduction of children. It grew out of a religious fringe group called the Holy Spirit Movement.
On March 17, hundreds of members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God gathered in a makeshift church outside Kanungu, a trading center 215 miles southwest of Kampala. They sang hymns and prayed before they were burned alive.
The death toll in the blaze has ranged from 150 to 600, and the cause has been attributed to gasoline, a bomb or both. There have been conflicting reports about the willingness of some sect members to commit suicide.
Museveni said the group had been investigated twice since 1994. While the first investigation turned up nothing worrisome, the second, by internal security officers, did conclude that the movement was a security threat. However, a regional official, reportedly a member of the movement, may have covered up those findings. Museveni did not say when the more recent inquiry was done.
Minister of State for Regional Cooperation Amama Mbabazi, who visited Kanungu Wednesday, said two of the main leaders of the group may not have died in the inferno.
Cledonia Mwerinde, 40, the former prostitute who founded the movement, and Joseph Kibweteere, 68, who was also known as the prophet, may both have left the compound before the fire.
Mbabazi said he met a 17-year-old cult member who had slipped away from the building before the fire. He said the boy reported that Kibweteere was not there at that time. The minister said some local residents had also reported seeing Mwerinde leaving the compound.
Police initially said all the group's leaders had died, but officials said later that only two leaders' bodies had been positively identified - the manager of the sect's farm and ``a priest.'' A number of the group's leaders were former Roman Catholic priests, lay workers and nuns.
Uganda's ill-funded and under-trained police force has been overwhelmed by the investigation, and many questions remain about what happened in Kanungu.
Various reports put sect membership anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 in nine districts in Uganda, a country of 21 million. It was a legally registered as a non-governmental organization.

SECURITY in Kanungu sub-county was limited at the time when over 500 people died in a mass suicide fire at the Movement for The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God Church at Kataate, Police said.
They said only one detective CID officer manned the sub-county at the time.
Steven Okwalinga, the southwestern regional Police commander, said on Tuesday that the security presence in the area was too limited to avert the catastrophe.
"At the time of the incident there was only one Special Branch officer, a detective CID, and five uniformed men in the whole area, which under normal conditions would have been manned by not less than 100 personnel," he said.
Okwalinga said despite their limited number, the officers were in close surveillance of the area and the residents had not reported any criminal activities of the cult.
"The cult members were good citizens and interacted very well with the other residents, the only complaints the residents recorded were with the office of the RDC and other civic leaders involving family matters which were not of criminal nature," Okwalinga said.

Kampala - Doomsday prophet Joseph Kibwetere sent a "farewell" letter to the NGO Registration Board two days before the March 17 Kanungu mass suicide.
NGO Registration Board chairperson and Mubende woman MP Joyce Mpanga told Parliament on Tuesday that on March 15, the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, submitted to the Board office their last correspondence, in which they talked of the imminent end of the current generation and the world.
The letter, dated January 15, was addressed to the Rukungiri District Resident Administrator.
It gave the history of the cult, its achievements and plan to acquire two vehicles.
Mpanga said the last correspondence from the cult leaders to the board sounded more like a farewell message. They thanked the Government for the support rendered to the cult. But no one suspected the cult was planning a mass suicide.
"The person who brought the letter bid farewell to the board secretariat staff. It was pre-meditated suicide," Mpanga said. She said the letter also talked of a new generation and a new earth after year 2000.
Mpanga said the cult took a long time to be registered and there were numerous correspondences between the board and the cult leadership.
She said in 1994, the Rukungiri Resident District Commissioner wrote to the Board against the cult's activities. But local leaders supported the cult, saying it was operating in accordance with the law.
Mpanga said when the Board told the cult leaders to stop restricting followers from communicating freely, they sent a "Jesus' reply," saying, "God sent us as a movement of truth and justice to notify the people to prepare for the closing of this generation which is at hand." Owiny Dollo (Agago) contributing on a resolution condemning the Kanungu horror, said devil worship and witchcraft was widespread.
He said, "I had a nasty experience in the north. I was told we should use witchcraft to fight Kony. And these were people in high strata of our society." Dollo said Prof. Isaac Newton Ojok, still believes Alice Lakwena is "a representative of the living God." Ojok was among thousands who joined Lakwena's Holy Spirit movement.

THE Kanungu doomsday cult leaders, Joseph Kibwetere and others, are on the run, Minister Amama Mbabazi told The New Vision yesterday. He was speaking at the Katate mass grave site where he laid a wreath on behalf of government."I have received information that Joseph Kibwetere and other cult leaders did not die in the inferno. I have told the Inspector General of Police, John Kisembo, to look for these people and apprehend them. My guts feeling is that Kibwetere and his colleagues are on the run," said Mbabazi, the area MP and Minister of State for Regional Cooperation.
A boy who escaped from the camp on Friday morning said cult leaders Kibwetere and Keredonia Mwerinde left the camp Thursday night and did not return. Amama Mbabazi introduced the 17-year-old Ahimbisibwe to The New Vision. Ahimbisibwe said Kibwetere and Mwerinde did not sleep in the camp the night before the mass killing. "I became very hungry on Friday at 7.30 in the morning and ran away to our home in Bulondo about 200m away from the camp. But Kibwetere and Keredonia prayed for us on Thursday night and they left the camp. They did not attend the early morning prayers. Ahimbisibwe's mother Goretti Noelina Banagaha and his 20-year-old sister Maria Namara died on Friday. Ahimbisibwe said he had been in the camp throughout last week. "I saw Kibwetere and Keredonia Mwerinde walk out of the camp separately at Thursday. They each carried a small bag" said a frail, hungry-looking Ahimbisibwe.He said he knew the cult leaders well because he did part of his primary school at the camp. Ahimbisibwe, who said he was in P2 in 1997, said Kibwetere and Keredonia used to lead them in prayers at the camp school called Ishayuriiro rya Maria Primary School. Mbabazi attacked security agencies for not being vigilant on the cult activities. He said the Police should have broken up the cult camp like it did with Wilson Bushara's in Luweero and Gwanja Nabaasa in Sembabule. Kabeireho, the LC1 chairman of the area, said he reported the camp activities to "all levels but nothing was done." Meanwhile, the Police in Bushenyi say they are looking for the cult leaders, adds Darius Magara. Wilson Kamya, the District Police Commander,told The New Vision on Wednesday, that Kibwetere was believed to be alive as the Police in Rukungiri did not identify his body among the dead.

KANUNGU, Wednesday - Fresh evidence of a murder plot prior to the mass suicide of some 530 members of a Ugandan doomsday cult was uncovered Tuesday as Police unearthed six people killed several days before the tragedy.
The bodies, four of them badly mutilated, were removed from latrines in the compound of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult and a forensic doctor at the scene, Dr Sam Birungi, said they had been there for a week.. The mass suicide took place on Friday.
"They had been killed before being thrown in these latrines, most probably with poison, but you can also see that some of them have wounds," said Birungi.
"The two first bodies were on the top and they don't bare any wounds even if it seems they have been burnt, whereas the four others, who were at the bottom, have been cut in the belly or strongly hit," added the doctor.
The partly decomposed bodies of six more cult members were pulled out of a pit latrine on Tuesday.
The bodies, three with their stomachs slit open and another with a crushed head, had apparently been murdered just before the fateful blaze, according to a doctor at the scene.
"Some were beaten, some were burnt, some were chemically poisoned then their bodies were dumped in the pit," said Birungi, after a cursory look at the six bodies.
The wounds of some of the six were huge, with signs that they were struck with machetes or hammers.
Birungi said no autopsy would be carried out.
The bodies were swiftly buried, with Police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi saying they were too badly decomposed to be positively identified.
More bodies were found buried in a vegetable garden in the compound, but Police said they had probably died earlier, from natural causes. "The sect did not allow any medication for illness - only prayers," Mugenyi said.

KAMPALA, Wednesday - One of the cult's leaders had purchased 40 litres of sulphuric acid days before the tragedy, the Police said.
Mixed with petrol, experts said the acid would form a highly inflammable and explosive mix that would give off a poisonous gas when burnt - a possible cause of the sudden explosion and fire which engulfed the remote church on Friday, March 17.
Police said Dominic Kataribaabo, a former Catholic priest, bought two 20-litre jerrycans of the acid on March 12, telling a local storekeeper that he wanted to use it in car batteries.
No car batteries were found in the ruins of the church compound in the remote town of Kanungu. But an empty drum was found at one end of the church building and police initially said it could have been used for fuel.
"It is confirmed it (the acid) was bought, but we are still waiting for the forensic experts to tell us whether it was used in the fire," Police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said.
An exact death toll might never be known. Hundreds of charred corpses were bulldozed unceremoniously into a mass grave on Monday, but Mugenyi said officials at the scene of the inferno now thought 530 cult members perished.
The tragedy was initially thought to have been a mass ritual suicide, although Police have said they are treating the deaths of at least 78 children in the blaze as murder. Many relatives of the dead said they doubted if all the members of the "Movement for the Restoration of the Ten
Commandments of God" were willing participants in the conflagration.
Police say they suspect the overall leader, 68-year-old Joseph Kibwetere, died in the fire. They also say they had identified the bodies of two of his associates, including Kataribaabo.

KAMPALA, Wednesday - Roman Catholic bishops Tuesday described Joseph Kibwetere, 68, the founder of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult as an "obsessed man" while the mass suicide of his followers was "a barbaric act."
Up to 530 followers of the sect, which claimed to follow a doctrine close to Roman Catholicism, doused themselves in petrol and set themselves alight at their headquarters in Kanungu, Rukungiri, last Friday.
Four of the sect leaders were former Catholic priests and nuns.
"This barbaric act is most regrettable and unacceptable in the Catholic faith and we condemn it in the strongest terms," the Rt Rev. Paul Kalanda, who chairs Uganda's Episcopal Conference, said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
It said the Catholic Church had "warned and urged the people, particularly her followers, not to join it (the sect) to no avail."
Kalanda said, "They were misled by obsessed leaders into an obnoxious form of religiosity completely rejected by the Catholic Church. Their promoters have constantly rejected warnings and admonitions given them by the Church authorities."

ANOTHER branch of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was burnt on the same night as the cult headquarters in Kanungu, reports Darius Magara.
The church premises at Muhenda, about 45 km from Kanungu, Rukungiri district, was discovered burnt on Saturday by unknown people.
According to local officials, the Kibwetere camp at Muhenda Rujumbura, Rukungiri, was established in 1997. They had established five semi-permanent houses and a church that could seat about 400 people.
Three of the six houses were grass thatched and the others had iron sheets.
All the structures were reportedly found burnt on Saturday morning local officials said. The camp is believed to have been set ablaze on Friday night, the day on which the inferno at Kanungu happened.
Neighbours told The New Vision that they saw somebody with a torch, whom they believe burnt the church at about 11.00pm.
Part of the banana plantation close to the camp was also destroyed. The New Vision and residents at the camp found a 10-feet deep pit inside one of the houses. It was not established what it was used for and what was in the pit..
The soil removed from the pit smelled paraffin. Kibwetere's camp at Muhenda was established on seven acres of land donated to the church by the faithful, who converted to the cult.
"Kibwetere's group was a mixture of different religions, I saw the Muslims here when they joined the Muhenda camp two weeks before the Kanungu incident, a group of about 50 people composed of Baganda, Batooro and Banyarwanda among others joined the camp then," she said.
"We used to hear them singing songs from catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal circles," she added.
She said two Muslim families of about 10 members could have been among those who perished at Kanungu.
Local officials identified some of the faithful as Muhenda Donato Bantariza, Pulukaziyo Munanukye, Verentina Busharizi, Teopist and Dinah. Several of their family members who had been part of the congregation perished at Kanungu.
According to local council officials the Kibwetere camp at Muhenda was established in 1997. They had established five semi permanent houses and a church of a sitting capacity of about 400. Three houses were grass thatched and three others had iron sheets.

THE Mental Healthcare Organisation of Uganda and the Makerere University Department of psychiatry have recommended that the Government sets up a commission to investigate the background and life history of the Kanungu cult, reports Anthony Mugeere.
In a press release issued yesterday, the two bodies said the findings of the commission would help protect the lives of vulnerable Ugandans from the activities of the leaders of future cults. They said the commission should have a lawyer as its chairman, a psychiatrist, a sociologist and a psychologist who is a pastor.
The statement was signed by Prof. Emilio Ovuga, head of the Makerere University department of Psychiatry.

One of the leaders of the Movement for Restoration of The ten Commandments doomsday cult bought 40 litres of sulfuric acid five days before the suspected mass suicide which left up to 530 people dead, police has said.
Regional police commander Stephen Okwalinga said: "Our findings so far indicate that it was not petrol (which started the fire). They must have used explosives. Fire begun at six different points, but what's more puzzling is that we have received information that the cult leaders bought two jerrycans of concentrated acid."
Security agencies said they found a receipt at the scene of the inferno indicating that Fr. Dominic Kataribabo had bought the concentrated acid from a neighbouring district. They were investigating whether the acid had been used in the blast.
A trader confirmed selling the acid to the prelate, who claimed he was going to use it in his car batteries.
"Since we found no batteries in the Kanungu camp and given the amount of acid bought we are investigating to know how it was used," said regional officer in charge of criminal investigations, SP Terence Kinyera.
Police says it found the body of the priest towards the exit from the church, suggesting he was trying to escape from the fire. His body was found with that of a baby whom was apparently trying to save.
Internal Affairs Minister Prof. Edward Rugumayo said they had so far counted 530 bodies. He said the cult had 4,200 followers in various parts of the country including Kampala. 
Kinyera said the explosion eyewitnesses said they heard before fire flew through the roof could have been caused by sulfuric acid which is highly inflammable and burns with an explosive sound.
Okwaringa meanwhile told The Monitor that though police had planted an informer among the cult members their plan had backfired when the cult leaders transferred him to another camp.
"Joseph Kibwetere's cult was smarter than our officers. The cultists made their preparations within two weeks," he said.
Among those who died at Kanungu were four serving policeman and two ex-cops..
Inspector General of Police John Kisembo says it has not been established whether Kibwetere, the 68-year-old leader of the cult, was among those who had died.
Police is investigating reports that he had instigated the murder of his rivals and followers who had grown restive when his prophesy that the world would come to an end on January 1 2000 did not materialise. Information indicates that the church was sealed from outside before the inferno, suggesting that some people stayed outside of it before the inferno.

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