Mpaata's arrest was prompted by an informant who alerted the police about a man in his neighborhood who had illegally detained and tortured an unidentified person to death.
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Edmond Mpaata at Jinja CPS.
Edmond Mpaata, the Nakaseke District Fisheries Officer, spent
the night in police cells on charges of illegal detention, torture, and
suspected murder of an unidentified person. He is locked up at Jinja Central Police
Station. Mpaata's arrest was prompted by an informant who alerted the
police about a man in his neighborhood who had illegally detained and tortured
an unidentified person to death.
The informant trailed Mpaata, who in the early
hours of August 19, 2023, reportedly loaded the deceased into his vehicle
registration number UAL 998B and drove to Mwiri hill forest reserve in Kakira
town council, Jinja district, where he disposed of the body. Police detectives promptly arrested Mpaata and examined his
vehicle, which showed fresh blood stains in the trunk area. However, he denied
any involvement in the alleged crimes.
Despite their search efforts, the
detectives initially couldn't locate the deceased. But a group of young people
searching for firewood discovered a lifeless body under dry trees, covered with
leaves. They informed the territorial police in Kakira, who retrieved the body
and took it to Jinja Regional Referral Hospital mortuary for a postmortem
examination.
The appearance of the deceased and the clothing matched the
descriptions provided by the police informant, who claimed to have seen the man
before his death at Mpaata's residence. Mpaata was apprehended alongside his
watchman, Sande Egesa, who allegedly assisted in torturing the unidentified
person. Reportedly, on August 17, 2023, Mpaata encountered an
unidentified man harvesting bananas from his garden.
Mpaata struck the man's
head with a large stick, causing him to fall. He then directed Egesa to lock the
man in a storage room, where he was subjected to brutal beatings for three
consecutive days. Upon realizing that the man had died, they decided to dispose of
the body in a forest reserve to cover up the crime. A local resident, speaking
anonymously, mentioned that her children informed her of a suspected thief who
had been killed at Mpaata's residence.
She dismissed their claims but only
grasped the seriousness of the situation after her neighbor's arrest. "We
have registered several cases of theft throughout this whole year and when the
children informed me of how a suspected thief had been tortured and starved to
death at Mpaata's residence, I firstly ignored them for fairy tales, only to be
informed about my neighbor’s arrest on Sunday," she said.
An unnamed detective involved in the investigation shared that
suspected blood stains and various items believed to have been used in the
torture were recovered from Mpaata's residence. James Mubi, the Kiira Regional
police spokesperson, stated that all the retrieved evidence would undergo
forensic analysis at the government analytical laboratory to strengthen the
case against the suspects. Mubi added that efforts to locate the deceased's
relatives were ongoing, with the aim of establishing any connections between
him and the suspects prior to his death.
