A crack team of specialized investigative experts have cracked the mystery of Moroto Government Prison break of September 16th that helped over two hundred hard core criminals and suspects escape with a dozen machineguns and countless rounds of ammunition.
Led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Francis Olugu, the sleuths from CID Headquarters Kibuli descended on Moroto on September 19th and within a week, had reconstructed the entire break-and-escape plot which took about a month to execute.The operation which smacks of treacherous intent and blatant abuse of responsibility while on sensitive duty as well as cheap disrespect for national security installations, started on or about September 1st when Superintendent Norman Aruho, as officer in charge of the prison facility, took the unusual step of appointing a hardcore murderer on repeat arrest, one Loguti Mariko, as head of prisoners.
This is a position usually given to disciplined inmates after being observed and confirmed as fully reformed, and certainly not an ex-convict who is awaiting trial for a capital offence like Mariko was.Olugu’s team of investigators also found that just before the breakout of 16th September, the Head of Reception at Moroto Prison, Principal Officer Fred Mugisha, received Mobile Money worth sh130,000 from a source that indicated that it was for Lotipus Challakweng, one of the dangerous inmates that eventually played a big role in the breakout.
Thereafter, the ‘amura’ man (in charge of the armoury where the over a dozen sub-machine guns were kept) Corporal Warder Atunu, removed all the assault rifles from the strongroom reportedly because the padlocks had malfunctioned.When the prisoners broke out on the afternoon of 16th September, they curiously found the main gate and the small gate open.
To add to the inexplicable state of the prison gate being open at the very time when the prisoners were planning to escape, two iron bars in the gate had been removed a couple of weeks earlier and remained unreplaced – implying that even if the gate had been locked, a person would have passed through – though 223 prisoners filing through would have taken several minutes making them fair game for the guards to shoot them at will.
But finally when the prisoners broke out and started running out, the investigators reported, Prison Commanders “Principal Officer Geoffrey Owori and his deputy Joseph Anguadia, told the staff to fire a few bullets in the air and then ordered them to lock themselves inside their offices instead of pursuing the escapees”.
ACP Olugu then concluded that the two commanders’ actions were either out of cowardice or deliberately intended to enable the prisoners escape. The investigators, after meeting with the top CID boss Grace Akullo, then recommended that five officers – the two commanders, the ‘amura’ man, the superintendent who appointed the hardcore suspect as head prisoner and the reception officer of handled the mobile money for the escapees -be prosecuted.
