By Aggrey BabaA dangerous gang that spread fear across more than 10 districts in eastern Uganda and parts of Buganda has been broken up, with police saying the leaders were former fighters of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
This was not an ordinary robbery group, since it was organised like an army, with commanders, informers, mechanics, and even people who acted as medics. Investigators believe it started in Jinja’s Kirinya Prison, where ex-ADF fighters who had been released under amnesty met and later built the group by recruiting other ex-prisoners.
A snake that is fed in the homestead will one day strike the chicken, a proverb goes, and the very men who were once forgiven and released are now accused of leading some of the most violent robberies in recent months.
From December 2024 to April this year, the gang carried out at least 14 robberies, where two people were killed, others injured, and more than UGX 600 million stolen. Police say the group planned its attacks carefully. Informers studied the victims, guns were smuggled from Congo, and after the attacks the money was shared according to rank, and those who supplied guns took the biggest share, which sometimes caused quarrels.
The first major case was in Mbale in December 2024, when an accounts clerk was blinded with red pepper before losing UGX 50 million, while weeks later, a mobile money dealer was killed in Jinja and UGX 21 million stolen. The group then spread its operations to Iganga, Tororo, Mayuge, Kayunga, and other districts, where they targeted businessmen, cashiers, and mobile money dealers, even striking in broad daylight.
In some cases, they took UGX 40 million from one businessman in Iganga and UGX 36.4 million from another in Tororo.
Police and crime intelligence later arrested 27 suspects and recovered two guns plus vehicles used in the crimes. But security says some suspects are still free and some guns are missing.
What troubles many is that the ringleaders were once ADF fighters who benefited from Uganda’s amnesty. Now, questions are being raised about whether they had really abandoned the ADF or were still secretly linked to it.
A Ugandan proverb goes that if a man drops his shield, do not rush to arm him again. And some say the amnesty may have opened the door for wolves in sheep’s skin.
For months, police struggled to link the robberies, as at first they looked like separate incidents, but as the killings and losses increased, the true size of the network became clear.
Even now, police say the gang’s shadow is still around, with some members still on the run and weapons unaccounted for, making an old adage that when you cut off a lizard’s tail, it still wriggles for a while, ring true.
