Police have deployed heavily at the Kampala Capital City Mortuary where a postmortem is underway on the cold body of the 73-year-old serial girl-child defiler Bernhard Glaser Berry.
Glaser succumbed to cancer at Luzira Murchison Bay Prison in Kampala on Thursday morning.
The deployment of both uniformed and plain cloth security officers is to reportedly prevent the deceased’s lawyers from holding a press briefing at the facility.
The Mortuary has turned into something else, mostly inconveniencing with a mandatory screening at multiple checkpoints.
Patrick Onyango, the Kampala Metropolitan Police mouthpiece says police swung into action after a tipoff from a whistleblower that the lawyers were plotting to pile journalists at the Mortuary to discuss issues pertaining to their dead clients farewell.
Onyango explains that a mortuary is a place only for postmortem, the bereaved family, or Police Officers investigating mysterious deaths but not press briefings.
The deceased’s lawyer Evans Ochieng who is present at the facility minus any relatives or friends says they are only waiting to carry out his last wish of cremating the body.
Ochieng clarifies that, prior to his death, Glaser willed that he should be cremated.
Glaser’s body will be cremated at Kololo crematorium later today.
At the time of his demise, Glaser was serving a jail sentence at Luzira prison on 19 charges related to indecent assault, aggravated defilement, and child trafficking among others levied against him in April 2019.
He had appeared in court on Wednesday in a stretcher for a bail hearing where the court ruled he pays 30 million shillings cash bail and proceeds to get treatment.
He was taken to Murchison Bay Hospital in Luzira prison where he died.
Glaser was the founder of Ssese Humanitarian Services, a community-based organization on Mwena Landing Site in Kalangala District. He was accused of defiling several young girls under his care between 2007 and 2013
He reportedly ran a joint on Mwena Island in Kalangala “Bery’s Place” where he could lure his victims mainly young girls and subject them to sexual abuse.
