King Charles Wesley Mumbere. Photo Credit: BBC
The chief of the Rwenzururu kingdom in western Uganda, Charles Wesley Mumbere has been officially charged with murder on Tuesday.
Local media reports that the monarch has been charged with murder of a police officer. King of Rwenzururu was arrested following clashes between his royal guards and security personnel although he has not been charged for the clashes that caused the death of 87 people over the weekend.
Instead the king has been charged with the murder of a police officer on March 24, 2016. The BBC correspondent, Catherine Byaruhanga in Kampala tweeted a copy of the charge sheet.
King Charles Mumbere charged with the murder of police officer Kasimba Geoffrey on 24th March ’16. Not related to weekend clashes in #Kasese pic.twitter.com/qOsYzQGt6x
— Catherine Byaruhanga (@cathkemi) November 29, 2016
Police in Uganda has been explaining to the AFP news agency why the number of deaths increased from initial 62 to 87.
“We recovered 25 bodies from two sub-counties on Monday and a postmortem is being done to establish the facts,” Kasese district police commander, Sam Odong, told AFP.
Charles Wesley Mumbere, is accused of supporting a new armed rebel group to create a new state called the Yiira Republic on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Uganda officials have denied allegations that state security forces committed human rights abuses during operations against rebels backing a local monarch in the western part of the country.
The Uganda’s minister for internal affairs, Gen Jeje Odong, told the media “What happened is a situation of self-defence. What do you do if I come to you, wanting to pierce you with a knife? Do you allow me to do it? Or you try to protect yourself? So this is really what happened that afternoon, in the palace. Security forces were being attacked, they had to defend themselves; they had to protect themselves.”
Charles Wesley Mumbere’s kingdom covers the mountains of Rwenzori, west of the Ugandan capital, Kampala with some of his subjects living in Uganda and Democratic of Congo.
Source: Africafeeds.com
