IRELAND/UGANDA: Ireland protests execution of Ugandan soldiers

Ireland said Wednesday it is "gravely concerned" at Uganda's execution of 2 soldiers blamed for the murder last week of an Irish Catholic priest in the east African country.

 An unidentified corporal and private were shot by firing squads Monday within hours of their military court-martial, and just 4 days after the Rev. Declan O'Toole, his cook and driver were slain in a roadside ambush near the northeastern Ugandan town of Kotido.

 The Ugandan army and government gave no public presentation of the evidence against the men. The slain priest's superiors in Uganda said suspicions were running high that he was killed because he had witnessed and criticized army brutality.

 "We are gravely concerned at the speed of events, at the absence of an appeals process, the carrying out of the sentences with such haste, and the lingering suspicions encouraged by this haste," said Foreign Affairs Minister Liz O'Donnell in Dublin.

 O'Donnell said Irish diplomats in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, had tried to talk to Uganda President Yoweri Museveni to appeal for clemency and, after the executions, to get a full explanation of the evidence against the 2 men and the circumstances of the priest's killing.

 In Kampala, Defense Minister Amama Mbabazi dismissed the criticisms as "outrageous," and said the executions were carried out quickly in part to maintain "the discipline of the armed forces."

 "Justice was done ... according to the law and not to individual will," Mbabazi said.

 O'Toole's religious order in Uganda, the Mill Hill Missionaries, said the 31-year-old priest had stumbled upon a pre-dawn army effort March 9 to disarm locals in the village of Nakaperimoru, part of his parish.

 The slain priest wrote, in a letter released Wednesday by his order, that the soldiers were committing "torture. People were being beaten until they admitted that they had a gun." His letter said an officer ordered him to leave, then a soldier lashed him in the back.

 "I left the scene to the sound of their laughter," he wrote in the account dated March 18, 3 days before his killing.

 The order's directors appealed to Museveni for "a full investigation ... to lay to rest the lingering suspicion that Father Declan O'Toole may have been a victim of some form of army revenge."

 In O'Toole's home city of Galway, western Ireland, local politicians praised his relatives for criticizing the Ugandan army's executions.

 "The execution of these 2 men only adds to the tragedy, and the O'Toole family demonstrated enormous strength of spirit in speaking out against these executions at such a painful time," said lawmaker Michael D. Higgins.

 O'Toole was the 2nd Irish Catholic missionary slain overseas in the past year. The Rev. Rufus Halley was killed last August in a roadside ambush in the Philippines.

 Like many European countries, Ireland has long banned the use of the death penalty in its judicial system.