The ongoing FBI investigation into the July 11, 2010 bomb blasts in the Ugandan capital Kampala on the night of the football World Cup final continue to cast doubt on the initial belief that the Somali militants Al-Shabab carried out the attacks.
The Uganda Record had reported two days ago, July 26, 2010 that sources close to the Uganda Police investigators said they had failed to find any trace of evidence that links Al-Shabab to the bombings.

Yesterday, Tuesday July 27, the Uganda Record got further information, this time from a police source who has been working with the FBI on the investigation team. This source says the FBI has arrived at the same conclusion that this was not an attack masterminded by Al-Shabab, even though Al-Shabab belatedly laid claim to the attacks on Monday afternoon, July 12.

Last Friday, July 23, the larger part of the FBI agents known as the Scene of Crime Officers (S.O.C) flew out of Uganda having completed their basic forensic findings.

A smaller group of FBI analysts has remained behind for a further period of time whose work it will be to produce a report out of the material gathered by the SO.C. agents.

A source spotted the FBI analysts having a drink at the Pap Cafe along Parliament Avenue in Kampala yesterday.

Police sources say the FBI has now started to look into Al-Qaeda instead. Echoing this shift from Al-Shabab, the Red Pepper tabloid newspaper, which had good sources in Ugandan intelligence, since last week suddenly also started reporting on Al-Qaeda rather than Al-Shabab.

Pursuing the Al-Qaeda angle will be problematic. After all, the basis of firmly pinning the blame for the attacks on Al-Shabab had been a claim by Al-Shabab that it carried them out.

The Uganda Record argued in an editorial that a claim of responsibility from a guerrilla group, by itself, did not constitute proof since there is a propaganda value in taking credit for spectacular attacks.

Al-Qaeda has said nothing at all about the bomb blasts. It will be difficult to force evidence of Al-Qaeda, having first been sure it was Al-Shabab and the FBI's own findings now ruling that out.

The Ugandan rebel group the ADF that is allegedly affiliated with Al-Shabab has not claimed any part in the bombings, something it should and could have done to back up the claims of its supposed partner-in-crime Al-Shabab.

As most of the world's news media and political leaders laid the blame on Al-Shabab the day after the blasts, the Uganda Record stated and has stood by its belief from the start that this was definitely not Al-Shabab.

The FBI would do well to re-visit the memo to it by the Uganda Record pointing in the direction of the Ugandan state itself.

Mysterious phone call at a Kabalagala restaurant

Meanwhile, the Uganda Record has got information of strange goings-on at a popular restaurant in Kansanga on the night of the bomb blasts at the nearby Ethiopian Village Restaurant.

A man believed to be in his mid to late 20s went to the restaurant's toilet and locked himself in it. He then got onto his mobile phone and started speaking to a contact.

Sources say this man in the toilet told his contact that the green light had failed to go on but, he said, the red light was on. The man locked in the toilet then proposed that they "do it" another time.

The length of his phone call, the fact that he locked himself up in the toilet and his discussion of a green light failing to go on, with a red light already on, and his anxious-sounding state of mind, suggested to the Uganda Record source that this might be a mission of some sort.

The man in the toilet kept on saying "It has jammed!" This suggested an electrical or electronic device of some kind. This exchange on phone took place at about 9:30p.m., about an hour and a half before the blasts at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant in Kabalagala.

This could be a possible lead for investigators