KANUNGU: Uganda -The unfulfilled prophecy of a Christian doomsday sect cost the faith of loyal followers, and perhaps their lives, as they began challenging the cult's leaders, a surviving 17-year-old cult member said. Peter Ahimbisibwe's allegation came Sunday as dignitaries joined residents of Kanungu and nearby villages in southwestern Uganda. They condemned the deaths of 924 members of the reclusive sect who authorities say were killed by their leaders.
Until Sunday, no sect member, past or present, had confirmed the common belief here: The failure of the world to end Dec. 31 led members to demand belongings they had surrendered to join the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God - a challenge that allegedly led to retaliation by sect leaders. A March 17 blaze inside the chapel of the sect's secretive compound in Kanungu burned 530 sect members alive. Authorities initially termed the deaths a mass suicide, but the discovery of the bodies of six slain men in a compound latrine soon shifted that assessment to murder. Since then, mass graves at three other compounds linked to the cult have yielded 388 more bodies, many stabbed and strangled. The pungent scent of rotting bodies emanating Sunday from a latrine in the main Kanungu compound suggested the toll could still rise. On Monday, police investigators were headed to a fifth sect site to search for more bodies and clues. The site was just outside the capital, Kampala, far from the southwestern villages of the other sect bases. Police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said the site was a home used by cult followers.
Also Monday, mental health officials in Kampala were putting together a crisis intervention team to travel to the sect's home of Kanungu, James Walugembe of the Mental Health Ministry said. "Nothing like this has ever happened before," Walugembe said. "People are shattered, really shattered." Ahimbisibwe, whose mother and sister died in the fire two weeks ago, said sect members began pressing Credonia Mwerinde, a movement founder who was known as "The Programmer," about the fate of their property during worship services. "The people who sold their property would inquire one-by-one. Whoever would inquire would disappear," Ahimbisibwe told reporters in Kanungu on Sunday for a government-convened prayer service for the victims. Ahimbisibwe survived March 17 only because he became hungry during what would be the last of the sect's frequent fasts, and slipped away to eat at his father's house, he said. Ahimbisibwe also said he saw a man carrying a hammer and nails early March 17. It is partly this testimony, authorities say, that has persuaded them that windows and doors were blocked to prevent sect members from leaving the chapel before the flames erupted - or fleeing afterward. Sect members were "always preparing" to go to another world, Ahimbisibwe said. But when they entered the chapel that morning for prayers dressed in the sect's uniform of green-and-white robes, they had no idea of what was about to happen, he said.
Meanwhile, thousands of townspeople gathered on a hilltop soccer field Sunday to mourn the neighbors they barely knew. Ugandan Vice President Speciosa Kazibwe called the architects of the deadliest cult tragedy in modern history "diabolic, malevolent criminals masquerading as holy and religious people." During the memorial service, Kazibwe acknowledged the failure of the country's police and intelligence agencies to expose sect. "Through deception and conspiracy, these criminals outwitted the security network (and) exploited the ignorance and illiteracy of thousands," she said, adding the government planned to convene an interagency group to study the country's cults.

The Police on Saturday began investigating another house in Fort Portal used by the doomsday cult linked to the deaths of at least 900 of its members.
The Vice-president, Dr. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe, yesterday presented the Government's condolences at an inter-denominational service at Kanungu in memory of the some 900 victims of the cult, found at the headquarters and on the property of cult leaders elsewhere.
She assured the victims' families that justice would be done.
The Fort Portal house, more isolated than other properties so far investigated by the Police, belongs to John Katebalirwe, who the police say was a senior member of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult led by self-styled prophet Joseph Kibwetere.
The house is at Sweswe, several hundred kilometers north of Kanungu, where 530 members of the cult, died in a fire at the movement's headquarters on March 17.
"There's a place where our sources told us the cult members used to gather, so we have to investigate," Freddy Kayima, the Kabarole District Police Commander, said before heading to Sweswe.
The isolated mud and wattle house, measuring about 10 by 10 metres, is on the edge of this hamlet, located a couple of kilometers from the village of Kyaka, around 100 kilometers east of Fort Portal town.
"This place used to be one of the meeting places of the cult. They used to gather here quite often," Kayima said.
A special branch Police officer said cult members began meeting at the house in 1998. After locals complained, the Police told them to leave but they returned in May 1999.
Kayima said the police believe Katebalirwe and eight members of his family died in Kanungu. "They used to come here for courses," Kaguza said of the cult members. 

DOOMSDAY religious cult leader Joseph Kibwetere faked his death in 1990, sources have said.
Quoting Israel Bagarukayo, a former school inspector in Rukungiri, the sources said Kibwetere bought a coffin and told his followers to fill it with stones and dig a grave.
"He told them to announce he had died while he dressed in white robes and hid in the roof of his church at Kanungu so that he would 'resurrect' on the third day," the sources said yesterday.
They said this was meant to make the followers believe he was a true prophet.
The sources said when the followers sent for his wife, Theresa Kibwetere, now 64, she refused to bury her husband, saying she had to see the body but they refused.
"She became suspicious and tipped off security personnel, who came and forced the coffin open and found stones inside," a source from Rukungiri said on Friday.
Over 900 bodies of his followers have been exhumed from various mass graves in Rukungiri and Bushenyi districts.

Relatives of the Rev. Richard Mutazindwa, the arrested deputy RDC Kabula,  have criticised Kinkiizi East MP Stanley Kinyatta for "engineering" his detention by linking him to Kibwetere's cult.
Mutazindwa, a former assistant RDC for Kanungu, for more than six years, was arrested on March 29 at his new station in Lyantonde on allegations that he "sat" on information about the "plans" of the millennium doomsday cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God led by self-styled prophet Joseph Kibwetere.
President Yoweri Museveni recently told press conferences in Kampala and London that Mutazindwa did not pass on to his superiors, vital information on the cult that lost at least 1,000 followers in an inferno on March 17 at Kataate, Kanungu in Rukungiri.
Mutazindwa's brothers, Clovis Nyakana from Kichwamba, Harugongo and Patrick Rwabuhunga from Nyakasanga, Kasese yesterday said Kinyatta was "lying and persecuting his political rivals."
They said Mutazindwa campaigned for Kinyatta's rival, Darlingstone Bakunda in the 1996 polls.

THE death toll in the Joseph Kibwetere cult mass murder has reached 1000, the Vice-President Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe has said."The official figure reached 1,000 dead people. I believe there will be more than that," Kazibwe told reporters as she arrived in Kanungu, where the cult had its headquarters and where some 400 members died when their church, its windows and doors nailed shut, was torched on March 17. Wearing a dark trouser suit and dark glasses, Kazibwe had, before the joint service, laid a floral wreath at the mass grave where the victims of the inferno were reburied at the cult headquarters. In attendance were ministers and other dignitaries.The service also featured a children's choir.
Most of the cult's dead were women and children. Most of those attending the service, aside from a sizable representation of the world's media, came from Kanungu and the surrounding area. Catholic, Muslim and Protestant leaders joined Kazibwe, to lay flowers at the mass grave. Meanwhile, Police units were scouring the nearby countryside, examining houses and locations once used by the sect led by former Roman Catholic Kibwetere.
The horrific state at Kanungu is no longer a case of mass suicide but a murder carefully planned by criminals still believed to be on the run," Kazibwe said adding that the perpetrators had out-witted the security network by playing on people's ignorance in the name of religion.
Kazibwe also said the Government had apologised for failing to detect and take timely response to stop the mass murders which were planned and instituted by the leaders of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments cult. She said the cult leaders were alive and had started spreading to Tanzania and Kenya. The Government has also directed that the NGO board reviews licences of other registered sects and de-register that might be harmful.
"It's unfortunate that these criminal acts eluded detection and timely response by our security and intelligence network," she said. She said those who had information prior to the fateful incident but failed to take action would be punished.
The service was led by among others Bishops Robert Gay of the Catholic Kabale diocese, William Magambo of the Protestant West Ankole diocese and John Ntetegyerize of Kinkizi diocese. The Bahai faith was represented by Steven Muwanika and the Muslims by Sheikh Hassan Yusuf, district Khadi of Rukungiri.
Kibwetere's wife, Theresa, her two daughters Mary Ahimbisibwe and Winnie Rugambwa plus their aunt Theresa Bashenya were introduced to Kazibwe who hugged them. Also present were families of those presumed to be among the victims."There are other graves that have not been investigated," Kazibwe said. "; This place is very remote. It is very easy to get confused, to get taken to a place like this and be told the end of the world is coming," Kazibwe said. She
said she found it hard to console the bereaved.

KANUNGU, Uganda (AP) - The unfulfilled prophecy of a Christian doomsday sect cost the faith of loyal followers, and perhaps their lives, as they started to challenge the cult's leaders, a surviving 17-year-old cult member said.
Peter Ahimbisibwe's allegation came Sunday as dignitaries joined residents of Kanungu and nearby villages in southwestern Uganda. They condemned the deaths of 924 members of the reclusive sect who authorities say were killed by their leaders.
Until Sunday, no sect member, past or present, had confirmed the common belief here: The failure of the world to end Dec. 31 led members to demand belongings they had surrendered to join the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God - a challenge that allegedly led to retaliation by sect leaders.
A March 17 blaze inside the chapel of the sect's secretive compound in Kanungu burned 530 sect members alive. Authorities initially termed the deaths a mass suicide, but the discovery of the bodies of six slain men in a compound latrine soon shifted that assessment to murder.
Since then, mass graves at three other compounds linked to the cult have yielded 388 more bodies, many stabbed and strangled. The pungent scent of rotting bodies emanating Sunday from a latrine in the main Kanungu compound suggested the toll could still rise.
Today, police investigators were headed to a fifth sect site to search for more bodies and clues.
The site was just outside the capital, Kampala, far from the southwestern villages of the other sect bases. Police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said the site was a home used by cult followers.
Also today, mental health officials in Kampala were putting together a crisis intervention team to travel to the sect's home of Kanungu, James Walugembe of the Mental Health Ministry said.
``Nothing like this has ever happened before,'' Walugembe said. ``People are shattered, really shattered.''
Ahimbisibwe, whose mother and sister died in the fire two weeks ago, said sect members began pressing Credonia Mwerinde, a movement founder who was known as ``The Programmer,'' about the fate of their property during worship services.
``The people who sold their property would inquire one-by-one. Whoever would inquire would disappear,'' Ahimbisibwe told reporters in Kanungu on Sunday for a government-convened prayer service for the victims.
Ahimbisibwe survived March 17 only because he became hungry during what would be the last of the sect's frequent fasts, and slipped away to eat at his father's house, he said.
Ahimbisibwe also said he saw a man carrying a hammer and nails early March 17. It is partly this testimony, authorities say, that has persuaded them that windows and doors were blocked to prevent sect members from leaving the chapel before the flames erupted - or fleeing afterward.
Sect members were ``always preparing'' to go to another world, Ahimbisibwe said. But when they entered the chapel that morning for prayers dressed in the sect's uniform of green-and-white robes, they had no idea of what was about to happen, he said.
Meanwhile, thousands of townspeople gathered on a hilltop soccer field Sunday to mourn the neighbors they barely knew.
Ugandan Vice President Speciosa Kazibwe called the architects of the deadliest cult tragedy in modern history ``diabolic, malevolent criminals masquerading as holy and religious people.''
During the memorial service, Kazibwe acknowledged the failure of the country's police and intelligence agencies to expose sect.
``Through deception and conspiracy, these criminals outwitted the security network (and) exploited the ignorance and illiteracy of thousands,'' she said, adding that the government planned to convene an interagency group to study the country's cults.

MBARARA, Uganda, April 3 (Reuters) - Ugandan police said on Monday they were combing the hills in the southwest of the country for more mass graves of victims of a Doomsday cult blamed for the deaths of around 900 people.
Police spokesman Eric Naigambi said investigators were overwhelmed with the process of exhuming bodies from sites used by the cult, but hoped to resume that task soon.
``The problem is that we are overstretched and underbudgeted,'' Naigambi told Reuters by telephone from the Ugandan capital Kampala.
``We've halted exhumations for the moment, but we're still looking for suspected sites where we think other bodies might be.''
Nearly 400 corpses were unearthed last month in several mass graves in southwest Uganda in houses belonging to the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
Around 500 cult members were burned alive in a church at Kanungu in the same region on March 17, Police believe cult leaders had been systematically killing their followers for months after a prediction that the world would end failed to come true.
Naigambi said a separate police unit was recording statements and interviewing suspects -- some in the southern district of Rukungiri, others in Kampala -- who might have valuable information linked to the case.
Police say they lack protective gear and boots to carry out the job of digging up bodies, and body bags to re-bury the dead.
UGANDA ASKS FOR HELP
At a ceremony on Sunday in Kanungu, Vice-President Speciosa Kazibwa called on the international community to help in tracking down cult leaders the government believes are on the run.
Naigamba said so far only one arrest had been made in what has turned into Uganda's largest-ever murder investigation.
Police last week arrested Reverend Amooti Mutazindwa, an assistant district commissioner in southwest Uganda, for allegedly suppressing an intelligence report that suggested the cult posed a security threat.
The heavily populated and remote southwestern region is one of Uganda's poorest.
Analysts say its poverty as well as the impact of AIDS and regional instability -- it borders Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- provided fertile ground for the sect's message that the world was about to end.

An interfaith prayer service began in Kanungu around noon on Sunday for more than 1000 people now thought to have died because they joined a cult that preached the imminence of the end of the world.
The service was led by Uganda's vice-president Specioza Kazibwe, who announced the latest toll, which makes the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God the most deadly cult in history, topping the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide of 912 people.
Kazibwe laid a floral wreath on the site of a church where a fire killed up to 400 followers of the cult on March 17.
The charred remnants of the church have since been bulldozed while the mostly unidentified human remains found there were buried in a common grave on March 20.
Since the fire, hundreds more bodies have been found in mass graves at several other sites linked to the cult in the region. Investigators are continuing to search for further bodies.
Sunday's prayer service, attended by church leaders from various denominations and the families of those presumed to be among the cult's victims, began around midday at a specially erected tent a couple of kilometres away from the compound used by the cult.
The service also featured a children's choir. Most of the cult's dead were women and children.
Most of those attending the service, aside from a sizeable representation of the world's media, come from Kanungu and the surrounding area.
"We knew a few of them who perished in the church," said Bridget, 55, a retired teacher from the village.
"Mainly we knew two families. We think they perished in the church because we haven't seen them in their compound anymore," she said.
"We know nothing about them. We just saw them going in and out of the village. Nobody talked to them. When you said hello, they just said hello, they didn't want to talk," she said.
"One day, my daughter was sick and Credonia (Mwerinde, one of the cult leaders) came to me. She tried to convince me to join them, she told me to come with her to a place called Nyapugodo and to bring my daughter and to pray there in front of a stone and that my daughter would recover.
"I said, No, I am a Christian, I can't go to a stone. We come here even though we are not close to them. We come here because we feel we lost our people," said Bridget.
Another onlooker, Denis Baguma, said he had "just come here to pray for our people who were burnt in the church."

BUNYARIGI, Uganda – After her young grandchildren’s abrupt departure, after the gas-fueled flames and the charred remains, 74-year-old Margaret Kibetenga wonders if there’s something she could have done.
On Dec. 28, her daughter-in-law came to her mud-walled home to fetch two children she had left in Kibetenga’s care. Saying she needed to take them to visit a sick relative, Jane Ayebare began packing her youngsters’ belongings.
When Ayebare muttered something about the end of the world being near, Kibetanga thought little of it. Ayebare had joined a strange religious group, but as far as Kibetenga was concerned, she was still Catholic. That’s all that mattered.
Of course, the world didn’t end Dec. 31, as the sect had predicted. But for Ayebare and her four children, life ended 10 weeks later in the flames of a sealed chapel belonging to Uganda’s doomsday cult.
They were not alone. Terrified, trusting or willingly marching off to glory, children of the cult streamed out of hill villages by the hundreds to die trapped in the flames of the sealed church or by ropes and knives in the hands of grown-ups.
Children made up a large part of the bodies recovered from mass graves in southwestern Uganda since the March 17 inferno at the chapel at Kanungu alerted the world, and some Ugandans, to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Authorities now are pursuing the sect’s leaders, who they believe masterminded the murders of at least 924 people.
"I never took it seriously," Kibetenga now says, her eyes dropping to the ground.
For the movement, childhood was an occasion of sin. "These days ... the majority of the youths go to hell; only very few go to heaven in a day," its handbook states. The sect’s leaders went to brutal lengths to ensure children wouldn’t fall into what they believed were the clutches of Satan.
In the early 1990s, Credonia Mrewinde, one of the movement’s founders, forced 60 children to live in a 15-by-40-foot back-yard shed in the village of Kabumba, according to Juvenal Rugambwa, son of sect leader Joseph Kibwetere..
He said the shed’s windows were nailed shut and the children forced to sleep on the dirt floor, where many contracted scabies, a contagious skin disease..
Children and their parents were placed in separate living quarters when they joined the sect, Rugambwa and former sect members said. Parents also were forced to withdraw their children from school.
Rev. Paolino Tomaino, who became acquainted with the sect when he worked in Kabumba from 1976 to 1989, says it was inevitable that the children would follow their parents, even to their deaths.
"You would expect a Uganda child to follow his parent," Tomaino said. "They were with their parents. I’m sure they couldn’t leave."
John Katebalirwe sold his mud hut for $30, then forced his wife, 27-year-old married daughter and her seven younger brothers and sisters away to attend a gathering at sect headquarters in Kanungu. Neighbors say the wife and eight children went with him unwillingly.
"He told us he was going to pray in Kanungu," said Aida Kaguze, who bought the hut from Katebalirwe. "They had heard from God, and they were going to meet Jesus."
On March 8, Katarina Tumuhimbise’s daughters, ages 8 and 14, left the remote western foothill village of Sweswe with adults who were leading other children to the March 18 dedication of a new church at the sect’s home in Kanungu.
Residents in Sweswe said the girls’ parents couldn’t afford to go to Kanungu. Instead, they stayed behind with their three younger children at their mud hut, decorated by a shrine with straw prayer mats and pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the pope.
The father insisted to his neighbors that he had left the cult but wasn’t able to stop his girls from going since they still were members.
Tumuhimbse, rosaries draped around her neck as she spoke to a reporter, denied membership as well and said a woman in the sect had taken her children away. The father chased after them, but in vain.
Their daughters were among the 530 sect members on March 17 who entered the chapel on the sect’s main compound in Kanungu to pray. Within minutes, they were enveloped by what police believe was a gas-fueled fire sparked by an explosive combination of water and sulphuric acid.

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