More FDC supporters arrested

Kampala/Mbarara

As two more people were arrested by security agents in western Uganda yesterday, the FDC party accused the government of witch-hunting its members over the death of a renegade former senior army officer.

“We want intelligence agencies to exist but we must expose them when they accept to be used by the government. The military is now being used by the government to torture opposition activists,” FDC deputy spokesman Boniface Toterebuka, said.

The arrest of Mr Obed Musinguzi alias Ssebagala, a former FDC candidate in the Bushenyi District local council elections, and Grace Twinomujuni, a nurse at Valley College Bushenyi, brings to five the number of people locked up over the matter.

Their arrest follows last week’s military detention of Mr William Mukaira, 83, proprietor of Valley College and FDC chairman for Bushenyi, along with Dr Aggrey Byamaka, an FDC official in Mbarara Municipality, and Mr Abel Kacwano.

With the elapse of the 48-hour constitutional limit within which a person can be held without charge, relatives and party lawyers are demanding that government either produces them in court or sets them free.

FDC lawyer Yusuf Nsibambi, yesterday visited Mr Mukaira in Mulago Hospital where he was admitted in failing health. “He is not well so I didn’t have proper instructions from him,” Mr Nsibambi said, adding, “I do not even know when he will be taken to court.”

It is understood that the State believes the FDC members were involved in sneaking the body of Col. Edison Muzoora, a renegade officer who was implicated in an alleged 2001 plot to overthrow the government, into the country.

Muzoora’s death
On May 27, Col. Muzoora’s relatives were shocked to find his body dumped on the veranda of his house in Kyeigombe, Kyabugimbi Sub-county, Bushenyi District. Army Spokesman, Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye said: “We have handed Dr Byamaka to police,” adding that when investigations are over, the suspects will be produced in court and the charges against them will be known. “We need to find out the cause of Muzoora’s death, after all everybody has been claiming that government killed him. Now, we are doing our work and they are saying that government is witch-hunting people. We are doing this investigation together with the police,” he said.

The FDC has condemned the arrests and likened the conduct of state security organs to those under former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, whose reign was characterised by extra-judicial killings and detention without trial.

“We are perturbed that security agencies have adopted the same mode of operation like the one we saw under Idi Amin,” Mr Toterebuka, said yesterday. “You cannot be arresting people from their homes and keeping them in ungazetted military detention centres and you claim to be a civilised government.”
“Neither FDC nor any of its members has any hand in the murder of Edison Muzoora. FDC is a clean party which conducts all its activities in open. The military should allow investigations to be carried out by the police,” he said.

Regional police spokesperson Polly Namaye said of the suspects yesterday: “We shall take them to court after getting advice from the DPP (Director of Public Prosecution). We shall have a solution if the investigations take longer.”

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1186202/-/c08notz/-/index.html

FDC officials are arrested by military

Mr Mukaira & Lt. Col. Kulayigye 

Military Intelligence officials have arrested Forum for Democratic Change Bushenyi District Chairman, William Mukaira, on charges yet to be disclosed.

Mr Mukaire becomes the second FDC official from western Uganda to be arrested by Uganda military officials under unclear circumstances after Dr Aggery Byamaka, another FDC officer in Mbarara Municipality, was arrested on Thursday.

Septuagenarian Mukaira was picked from his home in Bwatoogo cell in Bushenyi Municipality on Friday in the morning by military officers, and immediately whisked off to an undisclosed location.

Uganda Peoples Defence Force Spokesman Felix Kulayigye confirmed the arrest to Sunday Monitor yesterday but said the charges against the two officials will be made public when they are produced in court next week.
“I can confirm that we have arrested them. I think they will be produced in court soon, probably on Monday,” Lt. Col. Kulayigye said, adding, “The charges will be made public when we bring them to court.”

Although Lt. Col. Kulayigye did not reveal the military facility where the officials are currently being detained, military sources intimated to Sunday Monitor that Mr Mukaira and Byamaka could have been brought to the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence in Kampala.

Dr Byamaka’s wife, Doreen Byamaka, said yesterday that her husband was picked at about 1.30pm from his work place and that she followed him to the headquarters of UPDF Second Division in Mbarara where he was detained.
“We were at our place of work and a man dressed in UPDF uniform came and said we want you, let us go,” she said, adding, “When we asked where he was being taken and for what reasons, they asked me to follow them and go see the place.”

She adds that when they got to the quarter guard, they asked her to return. Dr Byamaka is the proprietor of Byamaka Pharmaceuticals and Hotel Serene on Buremba Road in Kakoba Division in Mbarara Municiparity.

When contacted by Sunday Monitor, the Second Division Spokesperson, Capt. Robert Kamara, said he does not want to discuss Mukaira’s arrested. “I don’t want to go into those matters so much,” he said.

Mr Mukaira, the former Bushenyi district chairman, is the proprietor of Valley College, Bushenyi, and also owns a hotel in the district.

Sunday Monitor has learnt that his arrest could be linked to his persistent campaign that government must explain the death of UPDF renegade commander Col. Edson Muzoora whose body was dumped at his family home on May 27.

Sources told this newspaper that the police had also targeted his wife but failed to find her at her home in Bushenyi.

The Regional Police spokesperson, Ms Polly Namaye, confirmed Mukaira’s arrest but refused to give details.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1184786/-/c09x7oz/-/index.html

Museveni's young brother advises him to hand over power in 2016

Gen. Saleh has ruled out the possibility of him calling the President to advise him to step aside. FILE PHOTO 

General Caleb Akandwanaho a.k.a Salim Saleh has said he personally feels that President Museveni should prepare to hand over power in 2016 to another person.
But he insists the big decision on the matter must be taken by the NRM party and not the President or his family.

He indicated that he would be ready to take up the mantle but only if “necessary”. He, however, did not explain the circumstances that would warrant necessity.

Appearing on the Kfm Hot Seat show on Thursday evening, Gen Saleh, who was speaking out for the first time to a national audience in more than seven months, a period that has seen wide speculation about an alleged fallout between him and the President, said he was not interested in the job of President of Uganda
The general, who was announced dead on a social media platform, talked about a wide range of issues affecting the country, including his conspicuous silence and absence from public life, the walk-to-work demonstrations, corruption and the recent purchase of Sukoi fighter jets.

Saleh attacked the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, whom he insisted had a hidden motive beyond concerns on the cost of living.

But when he was challenged on his defence of security agencies in crushing the demonstrators, Saleh warned that the situation could have been worse had he been in command.

Asked if he believes that it would be convenient in 2016 for President Museveni to step aside and allow someone else to assume the leadership of the country, Saleh said: “Personally, I would think so, but really it is up to the party (NRM).”

Saleh is the younger brother of Mr Museveni and played a big role in the 1986 bush war which brought President Museveni and the NRM into power.

During the show hosted by Charles Mwanguhya, Saleh explained that it might not be in the interest of the President to stay in power for a long time but that he could be acting under the influence of party interests.

“It’s not up to him, it’s up to the party,” Gen. Saleh said, adding, “As a family member---I think---we are permanently overridden by national and party interest, both myself and others in the family. I don’t think we would wish to be where we are. But sometimes we have to subordinate our personal interests to those of the country.”

Saleh, however, ruled out the possibility of him calling the President to advise him to step aside.
“No no. no. He is still my boss. He is a commander in-chief and I am a junior. I follow his orders really. I don’t have the privilege of challenging him. He is ideologically more competent than me, so he knows what he is doing.”

The former NRA bush war hero, revealed that he is not interested in replacing his brother as the President of Uganda unless if he is pushed by unavoidable circumstances.

“I operate better under command,” he said. “I have no ambition unless it is necessary. I am really not interested in that job.”

Asked whether Uganda should have spent $740 million to buy fighter jets, Saleh, a former army commander and military advisor to the President, refused to discuss the matter, claiming that it was the role of the Minister of Defence to defend the controversial purchase.

“I know you want our heads to clash but please reserve that question for the Minister of Defence, Dr (Cryspus) Kiyongo,” he said.

The Governor Central Bank, Mr Tumusiime Mutebile, said this week that Mr Museveni’s erratic policies and the government’s fiscal indiscipline have led to higher inflation and declining foreign reserves.

Mr Mutebile told Financial Times, a UK-based newspaper, that he had disagreed with Mr Museveni over the decision to spend $740 million on jet fighters, which has pushed reserves down from six to four months of import cover.
The ministry of Defence, under President Museveni’s directive, withdrew a reported $400 million (Shs960 billion) from the Central Bank to pay for the fighter jets without parliamentary approval.

But Saleh told KFM, a sister station of the Saturday Monitor, that as a security consultant, Uganda needs more aircrafts - three times the level of what has been purchased but that he is not sure whether this should have been the right time to carry out the contentious purchase.

Gen. Saleh also said he was disappointed with his friend and bush war colleague Dr Besigye who, he said, instead of proposing alternative solutions to the current fuel and food crisis, has resorted to inspiring insurrections against a legitimate government.

Dr Besigye spearheaded the recent protest whose callous handling by security operatives drew attention of the international community about Uganda’s flimsy political situation and attracted foreign condemnation of the President.

He defended the heavy force used by the Ugandan military and police in quelling the protests and warned that it would have been worse had he been in command because he cannot withstand the level of provocation from the opposition.

Big disappointment
Although Saleh admitted that the issues being raised by the opposition are valid and should be handled, he said he was disappointed with Dr Besigye’s approach.
“He tried to play a film on TV but that will not help him. His arrest in Wandegeya (by Arinitwe Bwana) was a pity. It was a pity for Dr Besigye to reach that extent of being manhandled like that. They should have used better means,” he said.

“He is a very eloquent person, much eloquent than me and that’s why he was National Political Commissar before I dreamed of becoming one. I don’t know why he has resorted to these means that ridicule him and Uganda.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1184086/-/c0a3ovz/-/index.html