The failed doomsday prophesy of Uganda's Ten Commandments sect cost the faith of previously loyal followers - and perhaps their lives as they started to challenge its leaders, a surviving 17-year-old cult member says.

Sect members started openly pressing Credonia Mwerinde - a movement founder known as "The Programmer" - during church services about the fate of land they had sold to join, Peter Ahimbisibwe said.

"The people who sold their property would inquire one-by-one. Whoever would inquire would disappear," said Ahimbisibwe, whose mother and sister died in the fiery March 17 climax of the killings of at least 924 people.

(China Daily 2000/04/04)