Pakistanis arrested for Uganda attacks: police

KAMPALA: Security forces have arrested more than 20 people, reportedly including five Pakistanis, for two bombings in the Ugandan capital last week that killed at least 73 people, the police said on Sunday.

“In terms of those who are in custody, certainly it is more than 20,” police chief Kale Kayihura told reporters.

Among them were five Pakistanis who owned a shop in a Kampala suburb, Kayihura had earlier said. However, the police chief later said that he could not give a precise figure. The Pakistan nationals were among eight people, including Ugandans, picked up at the shop, Kayihura said.

“They are being questioned .... They have to explain themselves,” the police chief said.

“The total number is eight who were arrested. But I don’t know the actual number who were Pakistanis but the total number who were arrested is eight,” he said of the arrests at the shop.

The July 11 bombings at a restaurant and a bar where people were watching the football World Cup final were claimed by the al Qaeda-inspired Shebab insurgent group in Somalia.

One of the Pakistanis had been mentioned in an email sent by a presumed Shebab spokesman as having links with the militant group, the police chief said.

The Shebab said that the attacks were in retaliation for the presence of Ugandan troops in an African Union force in Somalia, propping up the fragile Western-backed transitional government.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2010.