By Tim Cocks KAMPALA, March 14 (Reuters) - A Ugandan lawyer beaten by security forces brandished his bloodstained shirt on Wednesday as hundreds of colleagues ended a strike by marching around the High Court to symbolically cleanse it of a government raid. Ugandan judges went on strike last week in protest at the re-arrest at the court of six bailed treason suspects by gun-toting officers. Lawyers then walked off the job on Monday for three days to show their support. Oscar Kihika, president of the Uganda Law Society, said the cleansing was an age-old ritual designed to purify the court. "Our ancestors used to slaughter a chicken or a goat," he told Reuters as lawyers in black gowns filed past. "Our lawyers, in walking around the court, are engaged in this act." The lawyers, some of them in wigs, made defiant speeches vowing to defend the independence of the judiciary before joining the procession around the grand, colonial-era building. Sombre music played from speakers set up on the lawn. "We are telling the executive what they did was wrong," Kihika told the group. "We want commitment to the rule of law." The March 1 raid dismayed international donors and enraged many Ugandans, some of whom demonstrated in the capital Kampala. Kiyimba Mutale -- the opposition lawyer beaten unconscious with rifle butts during the fracas -- and another lawyer who said he planned to sue the authorities over the assault, held a mock trial outside the court. As the crowd gasped, Mutale held aloft his main "exhibit" -- the bloodstained shirt and tie he had been wearing that day. The six seized supects were charged with being members of the People's Redemption Army (PRA) rebels and plotting rebellion alongside Uganda's top opposition leader Kizza Besigye. The latest raid revived memories of a similar incident in 2005 when black-clad commandos from an anti-terror unit tried and failed to re-arrest bailed suspects in the same long-running treason trial, drawing widespread condemnation. Talking to Reuters at the High Court on Wednesday, Uganda's third most senior judge, James Ogoola, said he was satisfied with the government's latest response, which included a promise such attacks on the court would never happen again.
