Morning Star News 2 February 2023 (excerpts)
Police in Uganda have arrested two people in connection with the kidnapping of 40 Christian children lured by a Muslim posing as the leader of a Christian charity offering free education.
In Arua, in northwest Uganda’s West Nile Sub-Region, 27-year-old Siraji Sabiri, a Muslim, had lured the children to a hotel with promises of school scholarships and was possibly planning to sell them to a rebel militant group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A pastor in Arua first learned of the alleged scam from church members who told him a Christian organization was registering children for scholarships for a school in Luwero, in central Uganda. Sabiri resides near Luwero.
“So parents made use of the opportunity to register for the offer of such scholarships,” said the pastor. “I got concerned and rang the police to check on the children, because I was not involved in the whole process.”
Officers rushed to the hotel, found the children ages 5 to 16 and learned they had been booked on a bus for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Interrogations revealed that the leader, Sabiri, was not a Christian but a Muslim.
“The man had disguised himself as a Christian and was able to register over 40 children in the name of offering them bursaries, yet with the intention of selling them to the Allied Democratic Forces in Congo.”
Had the abduction succeeded, the pastor said, the effect on the church and local community would have been devastating.