Members of Parliament from Karamoja Sub-region have vowed to ensure justice is delivered to locals who were arrested as suspected warriors abetting cattle rustling.

Last week, residents of Kotido District were left in shock after the group returned home in appalling conditions, some of them malnourished while others are struggling with tuberculosis infections.

The group had been in detention in Gulu District since last year.

Jie County MP, Peter Abrahams Lokii, who transported the juveniles and youth from Gulu prison says he cannot comprehend the state he found the suspects in.

Lokii says after the army failed to issue any implicating evidence against the suspects in Agago Magistrate’s Court, the 21 juveniles and 279 youth were transferred to Gulu prisons where he says they were illegally detained.

At the height of last year’s cattle raids, the UPDF launched a campaign to restore sanity, during which villages and cattle markets were cordoned off and suspected warriors arrested in Lobanya Farming Zone in Kotido.

Meanwhile, Ismail Muhammad Lomwar, the MP for Kotido Municipality, intimates that an inquest into the alleged deliberate starvation of these juveniles and youth should be instituted.

On the other hand, Paul Piramoe, the officer-in-charge of Uganda Human Rights Commission office in Moroto District, says they will formally open a complaint as soon as medical officials hand them a report on the state of the juveniles and the youth.

Piramoe says when they dispatched a team to Kotido last week, the children reported tales of torture and starvation while in Gulu remand home.