Kampala, Uganda | URN | The People Power leader and President of the National Unity Platform (NUP) Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine has described President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s comments about the incident in August, 2018 as vindication for all crimes committed against him and his associates by members of the security forces.
President Museveni on Friday said the Special Forces Command (SFC) soldiers were professional in handling the MP Kyagulanyi and his colleagues who had provoked them in Arua.
Museveni was speaking in Masindi at the Kabalye police training school at the function to pass out more than 4,800 police officers.
Kyagulanyi, Arua Municipality MP Kassiano Wadri, Jinja East MP Paul Mwiru, Ntungamo Municipality MP Gerald Karuhanga, Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zaake and 30 others were apprehended following a fracas that allegedly involved pelting president Museveni’s motorcade with stones.
Besides Kyagulanyi’s driver Yasiin Kawuma who was short dead, Kyagulanyi and others said that they had been brutally tortured during arrest and in police/army custody.
While in Masindi on Friday, Museveni said that he had personally investigated the torture allegations raised by Kyagulanyi and his colleagues but found out that the SFC officers were only defending themselves from the unruly politicians who attacked them while resisting arrest.
Speaking to this publication on Saturday 22nd at his home in Magere, Kyagulanyi who is also MP for Kyadondo East constituency said president Museveni’s words have only helped to prove that the SFC soldiers tortured and abused the rights of the people in their custody to the extent of killing his driver Yasiin Kawuma.
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Kyagulanyi asked the Judiciary to expeditiously resume hearing the cases against him and his colleagues filed against the security officials who tortured them. He says the world waits to see how courts of law will handle President Museveni now that he brought out critical evidence of the Arua incident.
Kyagulanyi also made an appeal to the security forces as the country heads to the heated election period to desist from engaging in criminal activities of abusing human rights because the laws allow citizens to go after individual perpetrators of violence other than the institutions under which they serve.
