Soldiers draw blood over smuggled gold

Highly placed sources intimated that the precious stones in question weighed 4.5kg and originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is under a United Nations embargo, meaning the export was unlikely legal.

The market value of the gold was estimated at Shs1.3b.

Sources privy to the investigations said three people travelling in a Toyota Mark X, registration UBL 990X, picked up the gold from Mpondwe in Kasese District and were en route to Kampala where a Ugandan national, who is an honorary consul of a Horn of Africa country, was waiting to receive the consignment.

In the car was a soldier, a relative to a notable security official on foreign assignment, and a lady with links to the diplomat.

The Kampala-based Consul owns a gold refinery, which was convicted of tax evasion last year and fined Shs500m, and it was unclear if they were a buyer of the gold or were receiving it to be purified at their facility.

This publication understands that as the team from Kasese reached Buddo, some 15 kilometres west of Kampala, four people in a Toyota Progress car, affixed with registration plate UAK 375U, intercepted them on claims that they had committed a crime that was not specified.

The original registration plate, which police recovered from inside the car, was UAS 776D. The UAK 375U registration plate has on different occasions been spotted on police street closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras affixed to three cars of different makes: a Harrier, Corona, and the last, as on Tuesday, a Toyota Progress.

We could not independently verify claims by a high-level security source that the registration plate was likely being used by military spies on alternate cars to disguise their identity while on specialised operations.

Back to the Tuesday attack, one account is that the interceptors removed the two men in the Toyota Progress, and seized a pistol from one of them identified as Cpl Daniel Okiror, a military spy, before detaining the duo in the Toyota Mark X.

Col Deo Akiiki, the deputy director of Defence Public Information, shared a situation report, detailing how the incident unfolded, leading to the fatal shootings.

In the report, four assailants dressed in uniforms similar to that of the UPDF used a car to block the vehicle carrying the team with gold on Masaka Road, in Kyengera Town Council which is part of Metropolitan Kampala.

The quartet was armed with a pistol.

“[They] ordered them (team carrying gold) to disembark from their motor vehicle UBL 990X [and transferred them into another vehicle registration] UAK 375U,” the report reads in part.

The victims were told by their interceptors that they had instructions from their superiors to arrest them.

“They (victims) accepted to enter the [suspects’ car] knowing (thinking) that they were the same [team], [or] maybe could have committed a mistake. But they (victims) became suspicious when two [suspects] remained in their vehicle,” the report added.

Although Cpl Okiror was allowed to keep his pistol, he was not allowed to witness as their captors searched the gold-carrying Mark X in which only the female occupant had remained.

Two of their captors later whisked them away leaving their vehicle and gold inside. Their captors declined to tell them where they were driving them.

“Along the way, Cpl Okiror was disarmed of his pistol No. UG 45306157 JERRICO with 15 rounds of ammunition (bullets). Thereafter, the alleged kidnappers started communicating to someone that they had arrested these people and they were delivering them to the one who sent them,” the report reads in part.

From that point, Cpl Okiror, identified as an operative of the Defence Intelligence and Security (DIS), formerly the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence or CMI, alongside the relative of the foreign-based military officer, realised that their lives were in danger.

“[The diplomat’s brother] asked to go for a short call and in the process [he] managed to escape, leaving Cpl Okiror in the vehicle,” the security statement reads in part.

After gaining his freedom, the diplomat’s brother texted his diplomat and informed him about the incident. The diplomat informed the Defence Intelligence and Security (DIS), formerly Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, to follow up on the matter.

However, before the DIS officers could trace the vehicle and the suspect, Cpl Okiror used an opportunity of a traffic slowdown at Buddo on Masaka highway to grab his pistol from where the captors had kept it and in the ensuing scuffle, he allegedly shot the driver.

Detectives posthumously identified him as Alex Epoli and the UPDF did not say if the deceased was a soldier or not.

One of the bullets is alleged to have caught 50-year-old Erazara Nalumansi, who was a bystander, killing her on the spot.

Ms Dorah Kirabo, a kiosk owner, said Nalumansi was her daily client.

“She used to pass by this kiosk every evening to buy food and even [Tuesday evening] she was here at my kiosk where the assailants shot her dead,” Ms Kirabo said.

The witness said she had just moved to the neighbour to fry pancakes when the shooting started.

Mr Bakari Wasswa, a chapati seller, who witnessed the shooting, said a man in civilian clothes and seated in the backseat, shot the driver of the vehicle that had intercepted their vehicle.

The man behind the steering donned a military fatigue.

Following the shooting, one of the captors who was reported to be in the co-driver’s seat, reportedly opened the door and ducked out to safety.

“[He] opened the car door very fast and ran away after we heard the sound of the first bullet,” Mr Wasswa said.

He quoted Cpl Okiror to have said that they had been abducted and he opened fire on the abductors to free himself.

The area police responded to the incident and they were able to recover the suspects’ vehicle. Cpl Okiror also handed himself to law enforcement, who seized his gun.

However, the whereabouts of the Consul’s sister, the gold, and the Mark X car itself remain unknown.

Neither the military nor the police were willing to speak on the incident or provide details on a matter that investigators worry could draw international attention since the gold was from eastern Congo, which is under a UN Security Council embargo.

The incident, according to sources briefed on it, opens the military to scrutiny following a litany of past incidents where spies from the army and police’s Crime Intelligence Directorate allegedly provide escort services to gold dealers, sometimes double-crossing each other when transactions go bad like it did on Tuesday.

Insiders said the showdown in Buddo raised concerns in the highest echelons of security services in part because the government of DRC, where the gold originated, could suspect some of the elements of Uganda’s military involved in the Shujaa offensive against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) since November 2021, maybe profiting from Congolese resources.

The situation is complicated by reports that the ADF, a designated terrorist group whose capability Uganda says it has degraded, deals in precious metals including gold, making it difficult to ascertain which of the consignments that enter the country are legal.

Uganda’s gold exports have steadily increased over the past years, with the Bank of Uganda reporting that in the 12 months to June 2024, 90 percent of the country’s mineral imports were gold, valued cumulatively at $2.7 billion.

The central bank computations show that Uganda grossed Shs10 trillion ($2.8b) in gold exports in the referenced period, with a large percentage of the exported gold being re-exports, some brought into the country originally unrefined and then sold to other countries after purifications.

Allegations of possible involvement of some elements in Uganda’s military in smuggling or profiting from proceeds of Congo gold despite subsisting UN sanctions regime, resurrect memories of the plunder by Uganda of Congo’s resources during the 1997-2003 multi-country war that ousted long-serving President Mobutu Sese Seko.

The International Court of Justice later convicted Uganda and fined it $10 billion for the pillage, although the penalty was slashed by about one-quarter, which Kampala is offsetting to Kinshasa.

In an interview yesterday, UPDF 1st Infantry Division Spokesman, Maj Charles Kabona, said the army and police are jointly investigating the Buddo incident and officers have lifted fingerprints from the car to help them trace the suspects.

“The Scene of Crime Officers (SOCO) rushed to the scene and managed the scene of the crime, conveyed the vehicle to Nsangi Police [Divisional] Station as investigations keep ongoing,” he said.

Other sources said two men had already been taken into police custody, although we could not establish whether as witnesses or suspects.

Police said they have recovered a vehicle belonging to the suspect, a UPDF, and Uganda Citizenship Identity cards alongside handcuffs, military stores, and mobile phones.

It was unclear what information investigators had gleaned from the analysis of the communication data recovered on the recovered Sim cards.