In the past four days, Police has arrested eight more people and team of operatives from the Flying Squad Unit and the Counter Terrorism directorate has reconstructed the scene of kidnap and murder of Susan Magara, officials said.
This follows the Friday night raid on a makeshift mosque at Usafi Market on Katwe road in Kampala that led to the arrest of a key suspect in the kidnap and execution of the 28-year-old.
The Magara murder suspect piked from the mosque reported provided information that led to the arrest of seven of his alleged accomplices.
Police has refused to give the identities of the suspects.
Police inestigations reveal that after sharing the alleged $200,000 ransom they received from the Magara family, some suspects went into a spending spree, which included buying land and vehicles. The investigators have recovered land titles, car logbooks and one of the cars from a depot in Kampala.
Yesterday, the detectives visited Bulemezi (Luweero) and Buikwe districts where some of the alleged kidnappers claimed to have bought land with the ransom money.
One of the officers told our reporter on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorised to speak to the media, that the suspects who have since confessed to the crime.
Police together with the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) have been investigating the kidnap and killing of the bubbly Magara. Magara was kidnapped on February 7, 2018 from Kabaka Anjagala road as she was driving to her home in Lungujja. She was killed after three weeks and her body dumped on the Southern bypass in Kigo.
At the time of her killing, the Magara family had paid the ransom money demanded by the kidnappers. The kidnappers allegedly demanded for a $1 million (about Shs 1 billion) ransom but her family paid $200,000.
Since the investigations began, suspects have been arrested among them Ronald Asiimwe alias Kanyankole, Bob Kibilango, a known associate of Kibilango and Patrick Agaba alias Pato. Pato was arrested in South Africa and is still awaiting a ruling by a South African court for his deportation to Uganda.
All the other suspects who include Magara’s relatives were connected to the alleged crime by printouts from the phones of Kanyankole and Kibiliango. Preliminary investigations into the killing of Magara indicate that she was first gang raped before she was killed.
During her postmortem, semen samples were collected from her private parts and stored with the government analytical laboratory. Police and CMI are now using the samples to compare with the DNA of suspects currently in custody.
