Uganda Cultists Believed Slain by Their Leaders

Confirming the suspicions of relatives, authorities here now believe that hundreds of Christian cult members who burned to death in southwestern Uganda last week were murdered by their religious leaders.

Investigators have backed away from the initial explanation of mass suicide after studying detailed photographs of the group’s gutted church and retrieving six bodies this week from nearby pit toilets. Police say there is no doubt that the six died as a result of foul play, perhaps just a day or so before an estimated 530 people were burned alive during their morning prayers last Friday.

An analysis of the destroyed sanctuary of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God has convinced investigators that scores of worshipers were caught by surprise and tried to escape the inferno.

Charred remains were stacked atop each other in front of the windows and doors, indicating a panicked rush for the exits. The only door that wasn’t nailed shut was cut off from the main worship area when an internal wall collapsed during an apparent explosion.

With conjecture growing that the leadership may have decided to stave off a revolt of disenchanted followers by killing all of them, investigation spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said authorities are treating all but a dozen of the deaths as murder.

“It is being regarded as suicide of the leaders and murder of the others,” he said.

But there is mounting speculation that the top leader of the cult may be alive and may have managed to flee the country after masterminding the killings. Investigators are preparing to publish photographs of the 68-year-old leader, Joseph Kibwetere.

There have been unconfirmed reports from the village of Kanungu, where the cult was based, that Kibwetere left the remote hilltop compound shortly before the fierce fire swept through the one-story sanctuary building. All 17 windows and two of the three exits had been nailed shut. The door at the rear of the church apparently wasn’t sealed tightly, investigators say.

“Kibwetere could be dead or alive; we want him dead or alive,” Mugenyi said. “We now regard the leadership as responsible for murder. These people consented to go to heaven but not to die in a fire to get there.”

Many relatives of the dead cult members have insisted from the beginning that their loved ones did not go willingly. Adherents of the cult have believed since 1989 that the world was nearing its end, church papers show, but nowhere is there mention of taking matters into one’s own hands.

The movement’s constitution, filed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs here in the Ugandan capital, requires members “never to . . . cause conflicts, hatred or even get involved in the killing of each other.” Members also were ordered “to be exemplary in both civil and religious affairs and to observe the state laws.”

According to the cult’s doomsday prophecy, God instructed his faithful to hole up in houses designated as holy arks to survive as “anything that remained outside in the dark turned into evil.”

But an apparent farewell letter from Kibwetere and other cult leaders, received by local and national authorities two days before the fire, offered vague hints that the end was fast approaching.

The leaders extended forgiveness to opponents of the cult and also apologized for any wrongs it may have committed. The seven-page, typewritten letter, on file with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, presented a summary of the group’s 13-year existence before advising, “Our mission is coming to an end.”

It concluded, “Whether you believe it or not . . . the year 2000 will not be followed by the year 2001, but it will be followed by the Year One in a new generation. We are faithfully yours.”

Ministry officials said they weren’t alarmed by the letter because it mentioned no specific threat and the cult was well known for doomsday prophecies. Previously, the leaders had declared the “New Earth” would begin Jan. 1, 2000.

“They made periodic submissions, so this was nothing out of the ordinary,” said Paul Bachengana, the ministry’s permanent secretary.

The 163-page English version of the cult’s companion handbook to the Bible lists 12 cult leaders, including Kibwetere and Dominic Kataribabo, 32, a suspended Roman Catholic priest who police say was educated in California. Kataribabo’s body has been positively identified in the rubble. Most, if not all, of the other leaders also are believed to have been inside the church, but in a country where few people have dental records--a common method of identifying corpses elsewhere--authorities may never know.

“Since Kataribabo was found dead, it would make sense the others participated as well,” Mugenyi said. “But we cannot distinguish among the bones. You cannot say my bones are different from yours when you are skeletons.”

Investigators say the intensity of the fire was so great in some parts of the building that many people died before they could even move. Grass mats covering the floor had been doused in gasoline, Mugenyi said, and two large metal barrels are believed to have been filled with a flammable liquid and perhaps small explosives.

When churchgoers lighted their prayer candles, fire erupted from every direction.

A nearby farmer told police that he saw several church members rush out of the building not long before the conflagration to round up a group of children that had stayed outside to play.

“They had to make sure that no one was left, no witness who could go out and tell what happened,” Mugenyi said. “They even chased the kids inside.”

Pathologists say the six people found in the pit toilets, all of whom were male, probably died from poisoning shortly before last Friday’s fire but that they had first been severely beaten. Their faces were also doused in battery acid, making identification impossible.

Earlier reports of several dozen corpses in the toilets proved to be incorrect, police said Thursday.

Investigators have no clear motive for the alleged murders, except that the cult’s core tenet--that the new world order “where sorrow and misery are absent” would already be underway--had turned out to be false.

Relatives have said many cult members were preparing to leave the group and had even asked for a refund of their donations. With money running short, and the prophecy seemingly bankrupt, the leadership may have decided to avert a rebellion.

“Another objective for which God sent us this new movement of truth and justice is to notify all the people in the world to prepare themselves for the closing of this generation, which is already at hand at each one’s door,” the cult’s constitution professes. “Just as it was in the Old Testament at the time of the flood, God first warned the people through Noah; they did not heed Noah’s message, and none of them survived when the flood came.”