on july 7, 1971, two american journalists – nicholas stroh and robert l. Siedle (also a lecturer at makerere university) – set out to investigate the masaka army barracks massacres. On arrival at the barracks, they were arrested on the orders of lt. Col. Ali and to this day they have never been seen again nor their bodies found.
I often sat on the same table with Nicholas at Kampala's Apollo Hotel
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We discussed the situation in my native country of Zanzibar, which after
a bloody communist inspired revolution of January 12, 1964, had merged
(with US backing) with the former German East African territory of Tanganyika
to be renamed as Tanzania.
Nicholas told me that he reported on events in East Africa as well as Ethiopia.
I was an expatriate and even though I could have been classified as an Asian,
unlike other Ugandan Asians, I was not expelled from Uganda in 1972.
It was many months later that I learned of his as well as of a US history lecturer's disappearance when they had gone in Ugandan countryside to investigate tribal massacres.
May they rest in peace.