Mujuni Raymond
In the run-up to the 2016 election, a black site operation run simultaneously out of police [CPS] was set up. The reason: To stop P10. P10 was FDC’s vote protection team that sought to defend and protect the votes of its candidate then Kizza Besigye. Senior officers of police, 6 out of about 11 who sat on the police council, rejected this operation saying it had no foundation in law and in fact would lead to a partisan perception of the force. They were overruled and sidelined.
The operation was placed in the hands of the ruthless flying squad headed by then Herbert Muhangi. The officers under him were mostly rogue agents without formal police record but armed and funded out of the IGP’s budget. IGP then [Kayihura]. That operation arrested some 248 people. Some detained at illegal centres in Kamwokya [Mawanda road], others in Kireka, and some just beaten and tossed around in Masaka. It worked hand in hand with crime preventers militia.
The crime preventers were themselves,
- Illegal.
- Ill-equipped at gathering and passing accurate information
- Deeply partisan
- Armed [at least at the top of the hierarchy]
They supplied Muhangi and his team with the most faulty of intelligence. Some of it which is publicly known is that P10 intended to burn down cities post-election. Sam was arrested for this but never charged. The intelligence brief which led to that arrest was so faulty that it alleged Sam had printed T-shirts with KB’s face on it to distribute across the country and those shirts would be used in an Arab-spring style revolution
The other was that FDC was keeping critical documents for a tally centre at its head offices in Najjanankumbi. It was so faulty that even internally only IGP and Muhangi believed it. But well, rogue agents were funded to ‘stop it’.
An operation commanded by the late Kaweesi stormed FDC HQs, arrested almost everyone there, detained them at SIU without charge. Flying squad hunted down P10 members and beat them or coerced them to make confessions that would support the allegation. Sadly, officials thought they’d use this in a potential treason charge against Kizza Besigye which they’d use to justify locking him up for the post-election phase.
It backfired, massively.
Most of the confessions couldn’t meet the rigorous test set by the DPP to pursue the charge. By way of four different meetings, IGP sought to persuade the DPP to continue with the faulty ‘intelligence’. DPP proceeded. The charge fell flat. No mention of it can even be sustained today.
But what is important is what culture that created. An officer looking from the outside at how this happened also manufactured intelligence against the power brokers, IGP & Muhangi. The bogus intelligence was that the two had used the elections to create a robust network to overthrow the regime. It was even peppered to add that a neighbouring country was funding it – some trails were thrown in there. This bogus allegation led to the arrest of IGP for over three months without trial. It also led to the arrest of Herbert Muhangi for over four years. Kaweesi was murdered in cold blood and to-date, there isn’t a conclusive investigation on what led to his death
The crime preventers were disbanded in such spectacular fashion, absorbed as LDU’s and sent to the frontline during COVID19 regulations. The leaders were booted out. One contested for the youth Chairmanship of NRM and voting on it was suspended indefinitely. He went to NYC and was – on the final day – struck off the voters roll for being ‘over-age’. None of the masterminds of those arrests of the 2016 elections lived to enjoy the power they created. None has been brought to justice either.
The seven men who normally trailed KB in a van were disbanded too. One of them was arrested for vehicle theft in Mbarara. The others were denied police numbers, salaries or pensions.
It takes incredible memory loss to forget these things and do them again in 2021.
John Lennon says:
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”
If you participate in illegalities, you are meant to be in jail and certainly, you’ll be.
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