The Karamoja Sub-regional Members of Parliament have committed to see that justice is served to the villagers who were detained as alleged warriors aiding livestock rustling.
Residents of Kotido District were in disbelief last week when the group came home in terrible conditions. While some of them are underweight, others are battling TB diseases.
Since last year, the group had been held captive in the Gulu District.
The Jie County MP, Mr. Peter Abrahams Lokii, who carried the minors and youngsters from the Gulu prison, said yesterday to the this publication that he finds it difficult to understand the condition in which he discovered the suspects.
“Some could not walk, they seem to have been starved and tortured,” he said.
“Justice is not for bias, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions asked for their release, because no single person from Acholi nor the UPDF testified against the suspects,” he added.
The army failed to present any incriminating evidence against the defendants in Agago Magistrate’s Court, according to Mr. Lokii, who said that the army then transported the 21 minors and 279 youngsters to Gulu prisons where he claimed they were held unlawfully.
“We shall try all we can to secure justice for these people, we also appeal to human rights defenders to interest themselves in this case of torture,” he said.
Some families had trouble finding their kids among the 244 who came back last week. The family of Lokomolo Lomiat, a minor who allegedly contracted tuberculosis and died while being held in custody, is still calling for justice.
Seven days before his coworkers were freed on April 3, Lomiat passed away.
The UPDF initiated a campaign to restore normalcy at the height of the cattle raids last year, during which communities and livestock markets were blocked off and suspected warriors were detained in the Lobanya Farming Zone in Kotido.
Two further suspects, according to Mr. Lokii, are reportedly fighting tuberculosis at the Luzira hospital where they were moved three months ago.
“For Lokomolo Lomiat, we are trying to follow the issue of compensation through human rights agencies because he died in a case where he was not a criminal,” he said.
According to Mr. Ismail Muhammad Lomwar, the MP for Kotido Municipality, an investigation into the suspected intentional malnutrition of these children and young adults should be launched.
“We received children who could not walk and were malnourished, a sign that they were under torture and starvation,” he said.