KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda issued arrest warrants Thursday for six top leaders of the doomsday cult blamed in the deaths of at least 924 followers, the country's head prosecutor said.
The six have been charged with murder and face death by hanging if arrested and convicted, said Richard Buteera, director of public prosecutions.
Authorities, however, do not know the whereabouts of the six, nor whether any of them survived the March 17 chapel fire that killed 530 followers of their Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
The six include cult leaders Joseph Kibwetere, Credonia Mwerinde and Dominic Kataribabo.
Known to followers as "The Prophet," Kibwetere, 64, was the central figure of the harsh, apocalyptic sect in southwestern Uganda. It was Mwerinde, however, who many say was the mastermind of the cult. Known as "The Programmer," the 48-year-old claimed to have direct contact with God and the Virgin Mary.
Kataribabo, 32, was an excommunicated Roman Catholic priest, who some local residents believe may have died in the March 17 chapel fire that killed 530 of the sect followers.
Buteera, speaking by phone, identified the other three only as Joseph Kasapurari and two people with the last names of Kamagara and Komuhangi. No further information was immediately available on the three.
No sightings of the cult leaders have been reported since the church fire, which alerted authorities to the sect's deadly destruction and started a search that has uncovered 394 more corpses in mass graves at several cult compounds.
The search for bodies has been suspended for lack of proper equipment, such as rubber gloves for the inmates put to work exhuming the mass graves.
Prosecutors said they expect further arrest warrants, but they would not elaborate.
Police have already brought in for questioning a regional official accused of squelching reports of the sect's activities.
Police say Richard Mutuzindwa, deputy resident commissioner in the area of the church fire at the time it occurred, was close to the sect's leaders and attended cult functions.
"We believe that he had some knowledge of what was happening," Erasmus Opia, acting director of the Criminal Investigation Division, said Wednesday.
The AP obtained documents Thursday showing that top authorities in Kampala sent local police a "very urgent" warning in January that the sect was reported to be kidnapping children and burying those who died in mass graves.