The Irish government, religious leaders and an Irish aid agency have all expressed concern over the execution in Uganda on Monday of two soldiers, convicted in a court martial of the murder of an Irish Catholic priest and two companions.
The Mill Hill Missionaries in Uganda, of which the late Father Declan O'Toole was a member, said they felt "extreme unease" at the manner in which the sentence of death was carried out.
"This method of justice can cause suspicion that a full investigation was not carried out and that the hasty executions were meant to terminate the case," the order said in a statement.
The two Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) soldiers were found guilty by a field court martial of shooting dead O'Toole, his driver and a passenger as they travelled along the Kotido-Moroto road, northeastern Uganda, at around 6 pm local time on Thursday 21 March - four days before they were convicted and executed.
The two soldiers were named by government-owned New Vision newspaper as Cpl James Omediyo and Private Abdullah Muhammad.
The Irish embassy in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has conveyed its unease over the executions to the Ugandan government, the New Vision newspaper reported. "As a matter of policy, we are opposed to the death penalty. It would have been better to have full investigations," it quoted Charges d'Affaires Mairtin O'Fainin as saying.
Irish Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Liz O'Donnell, had earlier said she was "shocked and saddened" at the killing of the priest and his companions. "The Irish Ambassador in Kampala is in touch with the appropriate authorities regarding Fr O'Toole's death," she said in a statement on 22 March.
The executions have prompted the Irish nongovernmental organisation GOAL - which itself works in Uganda, focusing mainly on HIV/AIDS and street children - to call on the Irish government to withdraw its diplomatic representation in Uganda, The Irish Times newspaper reported on Wednesday. "The fact that these men were taken out, put up against a tree and shot dead stinks," it quoted John O'Shea, GOAL's chief executive, as saying.
Uganda is one of six priority countries for Ireland Aid, with development assistance expected to reach some 35.5 million euros, over US $31 million, this year (up from about $21.8 million in 2001) to put Ireland among the more significant donors to Uganda, according to projections made in October last.
It was still unclear on Wednesday whether that assistance, based on Uganda's commitment to tackling poverty and progress on democratic development, would come under pressure as a result of the soldiers' executions, which caused a considerable stir in the media and public opinion in Ireland.
The BBC on Tuesday quoted witnesses as saying that the two UPDF soldiers were tied to trees, had their faces covered, and were then shot in front of a crowd of around 1,000 people. They were the first public executions to take place since current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, it said.
Mill Hill Missionary Father Joseph Jones, a colleague of the late Fr O'Toole, told the BBC on Tuesday that UPDF officers had assaulted O'Toole a fortnight ago, after he asked the army to be less aggressive in their campaign to disarm residents in his Panyangela parish, near Kotido in the Karamoja subregion of northeastern Uganda.
"If the army was involved, then they are the ones that should be punished and not those poor fellows who were executed yesterday, because if they did fire the shots, they were only acting on orders from senior officers," Jones was quoted as saying.
The UPDF was thought to be keen to proceed quickly with the trial and sentencing of the two soldiers as it was concerned about undermining public confidence in a government-sponsored initiative to remove some 40,000 illegal weapons from circulation in the Karamoja subregion, the BBC reported.
"We want to show the public that the crime was carried out by individuals, but not by the army as an institution," Lt Peter Twesigye, a military officer in the subregion, told the BBC on Monday.
A two-month period of voluntary disarmament expired on 15 February, after which the UPDF began a campaign to forcibly confiscate over 30,000 guns remaining in circulation at that time. The soldiers' execution has now focused attention on the nature of that exercise.
"Nothing is going to bring Declan back. Executing two people like this proves nothing," The Irish Times quoted Ita O'Toole, the late priest's sister, as saying.