UGANDA – Kampala 31/03/2015. The Ugandan prosecutor in charge of 2010 Kampala’s terroristic attacks, Joan Kagezi, has been killed last Monday by two men on a motorcycle in the streets of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Joan Kagezi was in charge of the trial that have just begun last March 17th against seventeen suspected terrorists. Those men are suspected to have participated at the 2010 terrorist attack during the football world cup final match. The suspects are Ugandans, Tanzanians and Kenyans. In Kampala, they caused three deadly blast in three different places.
The attacks killed 76 people and were claimed by Somali terrorist group, Shebab. They were probably executed with the support of Shebab’s subsidiary group in Uganda: Allied Democratic Forces, ADF. Just after the July 2010’s blasts, Shebab had claimed the responsibility for the attacks as retaliation for the Ugandan troops’ participation in the AMISOM deployment. Kagezi, one of the country’s most important and famous prosecutor, was named director of the anti terrorism and war crimes section just after the 2010 suicide attacks.
According to Kampala’s police spokesman, Joan Kagezi was going back home when at 7 pm she was shot by a man on a motorcycle taxi. As she was passing on a street bump in front of Kiwatule’s church, the passenger of the motorcycle opened fire on Kagezi’s car. The prosecutor died soon after during her transport to the hospital.
Her homicide created a great wave of indignation in the country and demonstrated that Shebab’s strategy has definitely shifted from large offensive to punctual and deadly attacks, essentially against institutional and political targets. Nevertheless, since 2010, it is the first time that this kind of attacks intervene in Uganda (and outside Somalia and Kenya) on a precise target.
