Kidnapped boy narrates ordeal

Jan 07, 2009

A WITCHDOCTOR and three others have been arrested over kidnapping a nine-year-old boy. The suspects were picked from their residence in Kyebando-Kisalosalo, Kawempe division.

By Godfrey Kimono

A WITCHDOCTOR and three others have been arrested over kidnapping a nine-year-old boy. The suspects were picked from their residence in Kyebando-Kisalosalo, Kawempe division.

The suspects, currently held at Kira road Police station, were accused of kidnapping Shafik Mugombe on December 28 with intent to sacrifice him.

Police identified the suspects as John Sekiti Ssemusambwa, the witchdoctor, Harriet Nanteza, his wife, Paul Mugambwa, a boda-boda rider and Mama Gideon, a neighbour to the boy.

The suspects were arrested this week.

Maama Gideon, also a resident of Kyebando-Kisalosalo, is said to have collaborated with the boda boda rider to kidnap the boy from his home.

The kidnappers were allegedly acting on the orders of Ssemusambwa, a witchdoctor operating in Kirinya zone in Bweyogerere, Wakiso district.

The boda boda rider tricked Mugombe into submission when he informed the boy that it was his mother who had sent for him. Mugombe is a primary three pupil of St. Jude Primary School in Nakawa division.

By the time the boy was taken away (at around midday), the mother identified as Betty Kyazike was at work, a few meters away from her home. Kyazike is a midwife and operates a private clinic.

The boy told The New Vision that he would not be offered for sacrifice after the witchdoctor realised that he was circumcised.

“They undressed me inside a shrine and smeared me with some things (herbs). But when the witchdoctor realised that I was circumcised, he said I was not fit for sacrifice,” Mugombe recounted.

The kidnappers then took the boy and dumped him in Mbalala, Mukono district, about 35km along the Kampala-Jinja highway.

Mugombe’s desperate parents, who had already mounted a search and placed announcements on radio, were tipped by a resident of Mbalala who had heard of the missing boy’s announcements. The boy was recovered on December 29.

Kyazike reported the matter to the Police who later used the boy to follow up the kidnappers. The boy led the Police detectives to the shrine in Bweyogerere.

He said the cyclist who took him used the Northern Bypass up to Namboole before connecting to Kirinya through a dusty road along the railway line.

The Police has since been arresting all the people involved, the latest being the witchdoctor who was arrested on Tuesday night.

While parading the suspects before journalists at Kira Road Police Station yesterday, Police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said they would face charges of kidnap with intent to murder.

Meanwhile, a woman, who kidnapped a two-year-old child with intent to sacrifice her, has earned herself 16 years in jail.

Rashida Nakawooya, in her early thirties and a mother herself, was sentenced yesterday after pleading guilty.

“Given the gravity of the offence, it is the duty of the court to send a clear signal that acts of child sacrifice cannot be condoned by our society,” Justice Eldad Mwangusya of the High Court ruled. The judge ordered the witchdoctor, Saaloongo Sennoga Ssentumbwe, who was supposed to sacrifice the child, to appear in court on March 4 to answer similar charges.

Ssentumbwe of Bwaise is out of prison on bail pending the hearing of the case.

Nakawooya kidnapped Musa Sserwadda on August 7, 2006 in Lule zone, Bwaise. The child had been left at his grandfather’s home as the parents, Muhammad Kasujja and Mariam Nakimera, went to work.

Nakawooya was arrested with the boy at Ssentumbwe’s shrine in Mayinja Zone, Makerere in Kawempe division in Kampala.

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