Former FDC presidential candidate Kizza Besig

Former FDC presidential candidate Kizza Besigye is led by Prison warders to a Prisons van at Kasangati Court last Friday. PHOTO BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA

By ERIASA MUKIIBI SSERUNJOGI

Kampala- With Dr Kizza Besigye, Forum for Democratic Change MP Michael Kabaziguruka and Uganda Peoples Congress politician Dan Oola Odiya facing treason allegations, a siege mentality has gripped the Opposition.

Different members of the Opposition say the police and other State agencies are looking to link them to the recent spate of armed attacks.

The government, however, denies that there is any such systematic clampdown on the Opposition.

“Criminal liability is personal. It’s not collective responsibility. Fortunately, the affected individuals have been produced in courts of law and so their charges are particular and known. They will have an opportunity to defend themselves. There is nothing like a target on Opposition,” Mr Frank Tumwebaze, Information and ICT minister-designate told Sunday Monitor yesterday.

This is not at all reassuring to the Opposition that maintain the current wave of arrests is a settling of political scores, and has little if not nothing, to do with criminality. They point to the fact that one of the several opposition leaders, FDC MP Michael Kabaziguruka has not been charged in court by the time of filing this report.

“The police, in particular Gen [IGP Kale] Kayihura, is systematically feeding the public on speculation, disinformation and lies to create the impression that members of the opposition are guilty of treason,” said UPC president Olara Otunnu. “This is well in tune with what he has been doing in the past years; to fight political battles for Mr Museveni.”

Mr Otunnu singled out Gen Kayihura on this because the police boss had, shortly after the attack on Gulu by yet unidentified gunmen on Sunday, June 12, asserted that the attack had been aimed at freeing UPC’s Dan Oola Odiya from police custody.

Mr Odiya is the deputy secretary for mobilisation in the UPC set-up led by Mr Otunnu, and he has pitched camp in Gulu for days to try and secure Mr Odiya’s release.
Mr Odiya’s arrest, the police say, is in connection to an earlier attack on a Local Defence Unit, in which they say some arms were lost.

On the morning after the attack on Gulu, the police paraded a number of guns which they claimed had been recovered from the attackers. The police claimed the same guns had been grabbed by the armed men during the earlier attack on the LDU entity.
Mr Odiya was arrested in Gulu on the evening of June 8, and was held for over a week before being charged with treason.

On June 15, 2016, Mr Otunnu filed an application in the High Court at Gulu to enforce Mr Odiya’s rights and secure his unconditional release, in addition to seeking compensation for his detention.

Mr Otunnu’s application says for all the time Mr Odiya was held at the police station, he had not been informed of the charges against him and had not been allowed access to doctors and lawyers. When Mr Otunnu was eventually allowed to access Mr Odiya, he says, he was allowed only 10 minutes. The legally permitted time for detaining a suspect before being produced in court is 48 hours.

On the same day Mr Odiya was arrested in Gulu, June 8, Mr Kabaziguruka was also arrested in Kampala. He was detained for days at the police’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) at Kireka until he was released on police bond on Monday, June 13.

In 2002, Mr Kabaziguruka was charged with treason and concealment of treason, but the case has until now not been committed to the High Court for trial.

“The whole idea is to tire me out and turn me into something to be despised and shunned by trying to maintain a case against me which does not exist,” Mr Kabaziguruka says. Here he sounded much like Dr Besigye, who in a letter to Chief Justice Bart Katureebe dated May 30, voiced similar concerns.

Fear of incriminating statements
“I am sick but I have not been allowed to go to hospital,” Mr Kabaziguruka says. He says he was only allowed to call a doctor to his house, “but the doctor could not move with all his equipment to examine me from home. I still feel bad.”
Mr Kabaziguruka got a police bond from SIU on Monday, June 13, and was required to report back on Wednesday, June 15. But on Tuesday he was driven to another police facility, Nalufenya, Jinja District, for interrogation

“I was interrogated and made to sign a charge-and-caution statement,” Mr Kabaziguruka says. “I was tired and sick and I just wanted to go through with it. I didn’t even get to read through the statement (that I signed).”

He said he did this in the absence of his lawyers. Asked whether he resisted signing such a statement in the absence of his lawyers and whether as an MP he could not stand his ground, Mr Kabaziguruka said: “When you are in their hands you are not an MP; you are an ordinary person and you will do as they say.”

Reading the letter Dr Besigye wrote to Chief Justice Bart Katureebe referred to above, it would appear that getting suspects to even sign confession statements is not new.
Writing about the plight of his co-accused in his treason case of 2005, Dr Besigye said: “When they were eventually freed, my co-accused were re-arrested violently from the court premises and returned to incarceration where tempting offers for amnesty were dangled at them on a daily basis to persuade them to plead guilty. Some were swayed by these offers while others, knowing that they were innocent, remained steadfast.”

And Mr Otunnu had the same in mind when he filed the application to enforce Mr Odiya’s rights before the Gulu High Court. In his affidavit in support of the application, Mr Otunnu wrote: “There are fears that Dan Oola Odiya may be forced to sign a statement while in police custody without the benefit of legal advice from his lawyers to whom he has been denied access.”