‘Anti-Amin plotters plead guilty’

Press, 31 August 1977, Page 8

‘Anti-Amin plotters plead guilty’

NZPA Nairobi Radio Uganda said yesterday that 16 prominent Ugandans have pleaded guilty before a military tribunal to planning to overthrow President Idi Amin in a plot that also allegedly involved the country’s late Anglican Archbishop. The suspects, including top civil servants and other leading Ugandans, will be sentenced later, but the military tribunal was expected to order them shot by a firing squad. Their trial began last week. The radio said the alleged plot had been timed to take, place last January 25, the sixth anniversary of the mi-i litary coup that overthrew! President Milton Obote and l

brought President Amin to power. Reports of the plot at the time created world headlines and protests because of the alleged involvement and subsequent death of the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda (The Rt. Rev. Janani Luwum). Radio Uganda said yesterday that several of the accused named Oboth Ofumbi as the brains behind the plot which was first conceived as far back as 1975.

The accused, according to the radio, said the scheme also included plans for an ’invading force from the soI called “Uganda Liberation Movement” to enter Uganda and attack the international airport on the shores of Lake Victoria.