RUGAZI, Uganda: On Monday, authorities uncovered a mass grave in the backyard of a home owned by Dominic Kataribabo, the Christian doomsday sect leader. The pit contained the strangled, mutilated bodies of 74 people.

On Tuesday, they discovered 28 corpses in a room adjoining the foyer of Kitaribabo's spacious brick home. Many of the victims also appeared to have been strangled - knotted cloths still ringed their necks as their bodies were pulled from a dank hole in the floor.

The death toll was certain to climb. Yesterday police exhumed a further 81 bodies from the foundations of the cult leader's former home.

Over 180 bodies have been found since Saturday at the property of Dominic Kataribabo in the southwestern town of Rugazi, officials said.

Yesterday's gruesome discovery brought the number of dead to at least 630 in three compounds in southwestern Uganda that once belonged to the sect, known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Authorities believe the sect's leaders are responsible for one of the largest mass murders in recent history.

The sect had up to 1,000 members, and officials believe they account for most of the dead, though the identities of most of the victims remain unknown. Five other compounds in southwestern Uganda belonging to the sect have not yet been examined, police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said.

Scenes of horror linked to the apocalyptic sect have emerged since March 17, when fire engulfed the chapel of a sect compound in nearby Kahunga.

At least 330 people burned to death. Kataribabo, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest, is believed to have been among the dead - a body thought to be the 64-year-old's was found in the ruins, still wearing a clerical collar.

Authorities initially called the conflagration a mass suicide. But within days, investigators discovered six strangled, mutilated corpses in the latrine of the compound, triggering a murder investigation.

Days after the fire, 153 more bodies were found buried in a Buhunga village compound belonging to the sect. Police discovered the first Rugazi mass grave on Friday, when they came to inspect Kataribabo's compound.

On Tuesday, investigators including a pathologist arrived from the capital, Kampala, to unearth 74 bodies local officials exhumed from a trench in Kataribabo's backyard and quickly reburied.

While tissue and blood samples were drawn, investigators questioned Kataribabo's neighbours and relatives. His nephew, Bart Bainomukama, led them to the foyer, where there were signs of freshly poured concrete. Bainomukama told police that his uncle had said he was digging a pit to install a refrigerator. A hole driven through the floor quickly revealed the sight of a human leg.

Authorities are pursuing the two main leaders of the movement - Cledonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibwetere, an excommunicated Roman Catholic. The pair had predicted that the world would end on December 31. When that failed to happen, authorities believe, sect members demanded the return of possessions they surrendered to join the sect and became an insurgent force that was put down with brutal force.

Most of the victims have been dead for "about a month," police official Geoffrey Bangirana said.

Kataribabo was drawn to the sect soon after its inception in 1990. From a parish pulpit in the valley below his hilltop compound in Rugazi, 260 kilometres southwest of Kampala, he urged the church to adhere more strictly to the Ten Commandments.

The Rev. John Baptist Kabuki, then-bishop of the Mbarara diocese, did not tolerate Kataribabo's criticism, says Michael Karyango, one of his nephews. The two also clashed over an offer of money for development projects Kataribabo had received from friends he made in California, where he studied theology in the mid-1980s.

Kabuki barred him from receiving the funds, Karyango says. Soon, Kabuki stripped the priest of his duties and Kataribabo joined the sect full-time, later leading seminars at his compound on the movement's secretive, often harshly regimented brand of Christianity.

Agencies via Xinhua
China Daily 2000/03/30