Opposition strongman Dr Kizza Besigye has launched a scathing attack on Internal Affairs Minister Maj Gen (Rtd) Kahinda Otafiire for claiming that opposition leaders have been parading fake victims of torture.
According to Dr Besigye, Maj Gen Otafiire should be in prison because he has failed to rein in on security agencies for torturing and kidnapping Ugandans. Security agencies fall under Otafiire’s ministry.
“Otafiire’s right place should be in prison. He is the Minister in charge of Internal Affairs. He has seen what has happened because of his police officers. Didn’t he see Kakwenza Rukirabashaija?” he said in interview with NBS TV on Monday, 12 December 2022.
While officiating at the police council meeting last week, Maj Gen Otafiire ordered the Crime Intelligence director, Brig Gen Chris Damulira, to probe leaders of the National Unity Platform (NUP), for allegedly parading fake torture victims at a UN Human Rights Conference in Kenya last month.
According to Gen Otafiire, those that were paraded were victims of boda boda crashes.
The conference in Nairobi was attended by some of Uganda’s leading opposition key figures including NUP President, Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, Dr. Kizza Besigye, and Alliance for National Transformation-ANT National Coordinator, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu.
But according to Besigye, the minister should concentrate on first prosecuting the proven cases.
“There is no doubt about the existence of gross Human Rights abuses. Security people have been shown on camera crashing our people,” he said.
“Have those who crashed people ever been arraigned in any court? Who is protecting them? The Otafiires of this world. Otafiire saying what he is saying is the utmost abuse of the intelligence of Ugandans. Otafiire has never paraded anyone who tortured Kakwenza Rukira or anyone under his watch,” he added.
Kakwenza, a government critic and author, caught the nation by surprise when he fled to exile on February 9 while on bail on charges of disturbing the peace of President Museveni and his son Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
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.