Uganda: Slain Policeman Laid to Rest
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New Vision (Kampala)
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 18 July 2008
Herbert Ssempogo
Kampala
The Ugandan Police officer who was killed last week while on a peace keeping mission in Sudan had been set for a promotion, it emerged yesterday.
Detective superintendent of Police Julius Osega was due to be elevated to the post of legal officer for UNAMID, the UN/AU mission in Darfur, according to his supervisor, Julius Tumushabe.
"When he got to Darfur, he became the officer in charge of a police station. His commitment impressed the UN team," Tumushabe, who accompanied Osega's body to Uganda, said during a requiem service held in Kampala Church in Kireka, a city suburb.
Prior to his departure to Darfur, Osega, a lawyer, had been attached to the Police's legal department where he was in charge of the human rights and complaints desk.
On the fateful day of July 15, Tumushabe told mourners, Osega and his colleagues were ambushed in a valley where suspected militiamen showered them with bullets.
He was killed along with six other peacekeepers in the worst attack on UN forces so far.
"Osega hid close to the vehicle, where he was hit by a bullet" Tumushabe said, adding that the assailants stripped all the bodies. The team had gone to investigate deaths that occurred close to where they perished.
Wails and shrieks filled the church when smartly dressed Police officers brought in the casket, draped in UN and AU flags.
Two of the bereaved, among them Osega's sister, Anne Talemwa, were so overwhelmed by grief that they had to be carried away.
Osega's wife, Rhona, and the couple's five children, all dressed in black, sat a few metres from the coffin. The family endured a week-long wait since receiving the tragic news last Wednesday.
It was in the same church where Osega, a born-again Christian, had asked the congregation to pray for him only a month earlier. He had brought home the body of his colleague, Inspector John Oketcha, who was murdered in Darfur on May 28.
Addressing the mourners, deputy Inspector General of Police, Julius Odwee, announced that a policy to guide the deployment of Police on foreign missions was in the offing.
He demanded that UNAMID investigates the murders. Several senior Police officers attended the mass.
The body was flown in aboard a UN plane yesterday at about 1:00am. Police commissioner in charge of human resource, Benson Nyeko, and a few relatives were at Entebbe Airport when the plane arrived.
Before landing in Uganda, the plane flew to Rwanda to deliver the remains of the five policemen killed alongside Osega.
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The burial is set for Saturday in Aloet, Soroti district.
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