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Church guard opens up on drama during raid
What you need to know:
- The church occupies the first floor and is sandwiched between bars, lodges and residential apartments on the upper floors.
- Most of people said they saw armed mean-looking men cutting off the church and the neigbouring areas at around 11am.
Several eyewitnesses last evening shared a cocktail of stories of a secluded joint security raid on a city church understood to be frequented by worshippers from Rwanda.
Those who watched the Tuesday raid on Agapeo International Pentecostal Church talked of a sting operation akin to a detective movie.
The church in question is located on Ssuuna Road in Kibuye, Rubaga Division, on Entebbe Road.
Most of people said they saw armed mean-looking men cutting off the church and the neigbouring areas at around 11am.
Some were reportedly in army garbs and others in police uniforms. They allegedly came with about 10 cars and a dozen heavily armed security personnel.
The situation, according to one of the eyewitness, was “swift and frightening.”
A boda boda cyclist, who operates in the yard of Joinus Building that was raided by security personnel said the soldiers jumped off the speeding cars, sealed off the entire place, including the church exits.
Another eyewitness said when the army arrived, everyone outside the building, including those who were in the nearby lodges, scampered for their lives, fearing that the soldiers were going to arrest them. Others ran to different sides of the flat, which accommodates the church and O’Kla Guest House.
The cyclist, who preferred anonymity, said after the soldiers and police officers had taken position around the building, they cordoned off the area.
The soldiers used two cars to block both ends of Ssuuna Road, and ordered the residents in the area not to make any calls or take photographs.
Some soldiers entered the building and walked straight to the church which is housed on the first floor and stayed there for more than two hours.
Organised raid
Another eyewitness said those who were to witness the spectacle, were told not to move and they could only hear noise from the backdoor which the lodge guests use. “There was total silence in the church as well as outside and eyewitnesses could only see soldiers at the church balcony searching all the corners. It’s not clear what exactly the soldiers were looking for,” the witness said.
After almost two hours, the security officers marched out of the church the attendants one after another. They kept taking them to a waiting omnibus.
READ:
Rwandan-run church was on state radar for months
A witness says the church was established in the area about three years ago, with its activities stalling and re-starting over the months
Other suspects were ushered into the security vehicles. They were all not handcuffed but without shirts and shoes as is the case in most arrests. One woman in her 30s, who operates a shop on the building, was among the people arrested by security officers after she was found talking on her mobile phone.
The woman told Daily Monitor yesterday that her mobile phone was grabbed by an unidentified security officer and took it.
“They asked me to tell them who I was talking to and I told them that I was talking to a friend. I was arrested and taken to the car where I was asked whether I was a Munyarwanda. I told them I was a Munyankole and a Ugandan citizen, but they didn’t believe me. I was later released after a senior army officer intervened, but they went with my phone. They brought it back yesterday morning,” the lady recounted the ordeal.
She claimed this was the fourth time security personnel have raided the church in six months.
Church guard opens up on drama during raid
The dozens of men and women had streamed in on Tuesday, July 23, and congregated in the quiet of the church in the sprawling Kibuye commercial hub of Kampala’s Rubaga Division.
It was an overcast morning. Nothing seemed out of character. By 9am, the meeting of the estimated 40-50 strangers got underway at Agapeo International Pentecostal Church on Ssuuna Road.
Mr Anathanel Mbabazi, the guard at the church, had just spent four days on the job. He foresaw nothing ominous.
Roughly two hours later, a convoy of suspicious vehicles suddenly pulled up. Among them police patrol pick-ups, a coaster and numberless cars.
State presence and authority was all-pervading. Some of the security operatives were uniformed, many were plain-clothed and others wore dark glasses. All cast stern looks. Whereas others brandished AK-47 assault rifles, a few spotted more automatic weapons.
They had fanned in from all sides, catching the meeting attendants and neighbours unawares. Many had lain in wait and the precision of their convergence proved familiarity only possible after intense reconnaissance.
A bevy of the security forces blocked the back of the four-storey multipurpose building. On the ground floor are a bar and shops.
The church occupies the first floor and is sandwiched between bars, lodges and residential apartments on the upper floors.
As a bevy of the security forces took positions, as fear ran through guard Mbabazi who was now alive to, and terrified by, the prospect that the job he hunted for and got was within a split second a poisoned chalice.
His heart beat faster as if threatening to explode out of his chest. He fumbled. The military might downloaded on the premises was overwhelming.
Fear yielded to paralysis. Mbabazi had no energy, purpose or courage to inquire about the security men’s mission.
He was hired to provide security, but Tuesday converted into a day of nightmare for him where his command as the premises guard was substituted by vulnerability and panic.
The arrests
“The meeting was taking place [in the church], then suddenly many armed men, some in police uniform and others in plain clothes, stormed the place and surrounded it. They entered from the back of the building to access the church,” the guard said last night.
Instead of giving instructions, he wobbled to commands shouted at him. The questioning by the security forces was pointed.
Mbabazi was asked to identify himself, which he did, trembling. He was marched into the church section inside the building and ordered to produce his identification document.
The soldiers snapped it up. Then he was ordered first not to make any calls on his mobile phone handset, but shortly afterward tasked to surrender his mobile phone handset.
The same orders were echoed to the men and women gathered for the meeting. One after the other, they obeyed. And they were herded into waiting vehicles from where they were whisked off to an unknown destination.
In an interview last night, Mr Mbabazi said his account that he was just a newly-hired guard saved him from certain detention. It was, for him, a lesser price to pay if surrendering his phone and ID meant freedom.
The security operatives turned everything inside the church upside down. “They asked everyone to show their identification, switch off our phones and they took our pictures and identification documents and phones and up to now I have not yet received mine,” Mr Mbabazi said.
Each individual was photographed, he said, before being lined up to exit into waiting cars.
When the coaster was filled, others were marched into other unmarked vehicles. The guard recoiled into oblivion, emerging yesterday into a timid and confused personality. He rejected being photographed for this story.
“I don’t know what is going to happen to me next,” Mr Mbabazi said.
Yet he remained loyal to one thing: sticking to orders by the security operatives to keep the church floor off-limits and ensure no single material is removed.
