New details emerge on suspected ADF camp in Mpigi

Jul 08, 2020

According to security sources, during the raid on Saturday, the youth were being taught Arabic, one of the characteristics of ADF-related cells, which they use to indoctrinate the recruits.

Crime 

New details have emerged on the suspected Allied Democratic Front (ADF) training cell in Mpigi district.

The Crime Intelligence operatives under the Uganda Police on Saturday raided the camp in the Park View Cell in Mpigi Town Council, where they picked a number of youth and took them to the Special Investigations Directorate in Kireka, where they were being interrogated. 

The suspects are mainly young men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 of different education backgrounds who were promised ‘fat jobs' to work as secretaries, engineers, builders and other professions in a company called Istiqaama International Company.

It has a branch in Mpigi Town Council with main offices in Bugiri district. The cell, according to security sources, was being used by the ADF top ranks for enlisting youth who are later coerced to engage in terrorism activities.

Security sources say the main co-ordination office is located in Bugiri, according to documents recovered from the home.

According to security sources, during the raid on Saturday, the youth were being taught Arabic, one of the characteristics of ADF-related cells, which they use to indoctrinate the recruits. The youth could not, however, explain during interrogation both at Mpigi Police Station and at Kireka, why their leaders had decided to teach them Arabic.

The women, including non-Muslims, were directed to conduct themselves in accordance with Islamic code of conduct.

The youth in custody told security operatives that they were told they would be working on a project to build mosques and recruit children for sponsorship in 83 districts of Uganda but since April, when some of them were recruited, the promised project had not taken off.

Documents retrieved by the crime intelligence operatives indicated that a secretary was entitled to a monthly consolidated gross pay of sh750,000.

The majority of the female recruits were registered as secretaries, but for the period they have been in the place, they had not done anything, but were staying as a group.

One of the young women interviewed by security said she had stayed at the place for about a month, but said she had not been given any task to perform and was expecting to be paid.

She told security operatives that Faisal Ngobi, aka Faiswar, one of the leaders, mysteriously disappeared from the place days before the security raided the home.

The rest of the girls said they were told they would be assigned to different sites to work on the projects.

The operatives also recovered confidential files, which contained a list of ‘founders' of Istiqaama International Company who the operatives said would be asked to explain their activities.

According to the documents, the founders and other directors were each earning sh6m per month, plus other entitlements.

The security were concerned that the number of paid founders whose names they declined to reveal were receiving hefty salaries, but the organisation's source of funding was unknown.

The organisation, according to the security sources, was not registered with the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council and the Uganda Registration Services Bureau.

No information had been obtained detailing the list of schools and mosques that were supposed to be built and who was giving them the funds to undertake such a huge project.

Ngobi, who was later traced and arrested however told the operatives that he was working on instructions from Abdallah Sulaiman Kakaire, one of the top leaders based in Bugiri.

He said he first met him while in prison in Bugiri where both of them were detained for offenses yet to be established.

Kakaire is still at large but efforts were being made to apprehend him.

The detectives were still analyzing the documents and other files recovered from the home and interviewing the youth, one by one to get to the core of their activities.

The Park View chairperson, Rita Naluggwa, who was taken together with the youth said that she received information that security operatives had cordoned off the home and decided to check what was happening.

She said she offered to follow the youth to the Mpigi Police Station where they were first held because she was concerned about their fate.

She said she willingly offered to move with them and that was how she landed in Kireka, where she was still kept with the group.

She said that sometime in March, before the COVID-19 lockdown, Ngobi, who was in the company of four men was introduced to her by one Yasin Lule, the owner of the house where they rented.

As was her practice, she said she asked them to surrender photocopies of their National Identity cards and passport photos, which they obliged.

She said when the number grew, Ngobi rented another house from Francis Ntege aka Kabiriti.

"They explained to me that they were building mosques and schools and helping needy children," she said.

She later saw them moving to other areas, including Butambala district, where they picked more people.

She said she believed the group was genuine.

"It was, therefore, a surprise when I received information on Saturday that the youth had been arrested and their home searched and I offered to follow them because I wanted to know where they were being taken," she explained but denied being on the organisation's payroll.

"We suspect that they were buying time by registering these youth and promising them jobs when the actual mission was to recruit them into the ADF activities," a security source argued, adding that similar activities were being investigated mainly in Busoga region.

One of the confidentiality sections of their appointment letters indicates that each one of them was expected not to  ‘without explicit authority,' disclose to any person or persons any information that may come to them in the course of or by virtue of their employment.

"Breach of confidentiality will be regarded by the company as a breach of this contract and may lead to dismissal," one of the contracts stated.

Another document, retrieved from the files, obtained from the office of the general accountant located in Bugiri, indicated that the organisation had recruited 165 workers who would earn sh636.6m in salaries.

The document, which was yet to be verified, indicated that a total budget of sh125.099b was to be spent on construction of 442 mosques (sh28b), 442 schools (sh69b), 70 hospitals (sh5.2b), 442 boreholes (sh16b), 954 toilets (sh4.2b).

Brig. Chris Ddamulira Sserunjogi, the director of crime intelligence, told New Vision that he obtained intelligence information that an organisation known as ISTI Qaama International Company, was gathering youth from different parts of the country. 

Ddamulira said he dispatched a team that carried out surveillance and, indeed, confirmed that a number of youth had been gathering in Mpigi.

Ddamulira said 22 suspects were picked up during the raid on Saturday, but other sources intimated that the number was over 100.

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