KAMPALA – Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire – the Minister of Internal Affairs, has ordered the Police’s Crime Intelligence boss – Brig Gen Chris Damulira to institute an investigation into the motive of the National Unity Platform –NUP leadership, whom he said, ‘paraded a fake list of tortured victims before a UN Human Rights Conference,’ in Kenya last month.
According to Gen Otafiire, the list of tortured victims exhibited at the Nairobi Conference was a duplicate of boda-boda accident fatalities.
Gen Otafiire noted that the Nairobi Conference, which leading opposition figures including NUP president, Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, Dr Kizza Besigye, and Alliance for National Transformation – ANT – National Coordinator, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu attended, had exposed Kampala as a torturous regime, whereas not.
“These were boda boda accident victims. The government does not drive boda boda and it has never put anyone on boda boda.
“I have directed the crime intelligence to look for these people and hand
them to the CID director so that they can be taken to court,” said Gen Otafiire, on Thursday as he commissioned the police’s housing units in Naguru, a Kampala suburb.
NUP Secretary-General, Lewis Rubongoya, dismissed the general’s allegations, saying nobody has ever hired people to disguise as torture victims. Rubongoya added that some of the victims have been injured by teargas canisters and police had on several occasions issued statements admitting that people were injured by their officers.
“There were no victims of accidents. In any case, some of them are in the police reports. Like a young man of Makerere who was hit with a teargas canister.
“There’s no need for investigations and all of them are there, they should tell us who were a victim of accidents,” reasoned Rubongoya.
But Otafiire said that the alleged torture victim masquerades as well as the people who paraded them – including Kyagulanyi, Dr Besigye, and Maj Gen Muntu should be charged with treason
Between the 2020 and 2021 presidential election process, several people subscribing to the People Power Movement, which metamorphosed into NUP were abducted, and held incommunicado for several months but resurfaced with heinous injuries all over their bodies.
Former CMI commander, Maj Gen Abel Kandiho, who was transferred to Uganda Police Force to serve as Chief of Joint Staff barely a year ago, was sanctioned by the United States on grounds of having directed or personally participated in abductions and torturing of Ugandans because of their political affiliation.
