BUSOGA REGION: Busoga East police are holding a man accused of dropping leaflets in the community with threatening messages in Namutumba district. The suspect is Ronald Nantamu, a resident of Mawundo village in Namutumba sub-county.
On Easter Sunday, he was arrested for dropping leaflets with messages telling people to leave their village and make way for development or risk their lives.
Police swung into action after receiving complaints from community members who found the leaflets in their compounds. Detectives used canine dogs to look at a lot of houses in the village, and after looking at a lot of them, they found Nantamu’s home.
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The detectives recovered an unspecified number of leaflets, pens, markers, and plain papers, which the suspect is believed to have used to write the life-threatening leaflets.
Esther Namwase told journalists that the leaflet that was dropped in her compound on Saturday night contained messages instructing her to vacate the village within seven days.
“The leaflet was written detailing the time frame granted to me by the author to vacate the village, and I handed it over to the area LC 1 chairperson, only to realize that over 13 families in our village had received similar threatening leaflets,” she said.
The area’s LC Chairperson, Hussein Kisubi, says that he engaged the police after receiving several complaints from residents about the leaflets. “We, first of all, thought that the leaflets were being dropped by school-going children. However, I resolved to alert the police after noticing that there was increasing panic and uncertainty resulting from such leaflets, “he said.
Muhammad Magombe, the Namutumba Gombolola Internal Security Officer, says that some of the leaflets contained death threats to non-compliant members and sketches of skeletons.
Diana Nandawula, the police spokesperson for Busoga East, says that investigations are still going on, and that a detailed report on the same will be released after the investigation is over.
