55 More Victims of Uganda Doomsday Cult Discovered

A month after officials dug up hundreds of victims of a Ugandan doomsday cult, workers Thursday exhumed the bodies of 55 more people--mostly women and children--from under a garage rented by a cult leader.

Gravediggers clad in yellow plastic protective gear removed the bodies of 22 women, 15 men, 10 girls and eight boys from three graves under a garage attached to a small brick house in a residential area just south of Kampala, the capital, police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said.

He said that the bodies bore no external signs of violence and that the cause of death would be determined by pathologists. The remains were wrapped in black plastic bags and loaded onto a trailer to be taken to the municipal cemetery for burial.

The exhumations came a month after prisoners dug up 80 bodies and a skull from a cult compound in the village of Rushojwa in southwestern Uganda, one of four properties tied to the cult where bodies were found.

Mugenyi said police had suspected for some time that there might be bodies at the house rented by excommunicated Roman Catholic priest Dominic Kataribabo, a leader of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God--the cult now blamed for 979 deaths.

Dozens of police and soldiers kept reporters and photographers well away from the property as the bodies were being retrieved.

Mugenyi said the digging at the compound was finished, and authorities did not expect to find more bodies there.

When several hundred people were reported to have perished in a fire at a cult compound in Kanungu on March 17, the deaths were first believed to have been a mass suicide. Authorities later said at least 530 people were burned alive.

Later, six bodies were found in a pit latrine at the compound, and 388 more in houses owned or rented by cult leaders in three other villages.

Earlier this month, police issued arrest warrants for Kataribabo, 63, Joseph Kibwetere, 68, Keredonia Mwerinde, 48, and three other cult leaders. They initially were thought to have died in the Kanungu fire.

Friends and relatives of the victims said cult leaders encouraged their followers to sell their worldly possessions to prepare for the end of the world, which they said would occur Dec. 31. When the end failed to materialize, some members began to ask for their goods back.

Kataribabo earned a master’s degree in religious studies from Loyola Marymount University in 1987.