Winnie Byanyima who is the UNAIDS Executive Director, and also the wife of Uganda’s opposition politician, Dr. Kizza Besigye, has narrated how her husband was abducted by Uganda’s security services in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, driven throughout the night towards the border, and thrown in a military jail in Kampala.
Besigye went missing on November 16 in Nairobi, where he had traveled to attend a book launch by the Kenyan former Justice Minister and deputy presidential candidate, Martha Karua.
Besigye was in the company of his political associate, Hajj Obeid Lutale, who has since been charged with four counts relating to security, illegal possession of two pistols, and illegal possession of eight rounds of ammunition by the Ugandan military court.
Appearing on Kenyan television, Citizen, on Wednesday, Byanyima revealed that a British national was involved in the operation.
“He (Besigye) arrived on a Saturday, and the launch was going to be on a Sunday. Then someone he knew had invited him to meet him here in Nairobi, who is a British national, as far as he knows. And this British national said he had a group of colleagues and friends and businesses who invest in Africa, who wanted to support political parties and could support their mass mobilization work and their party activity. So he (Besigye) was exploring this,” Byanyima narrated.
The British national then invited Besigye to a meeting in an apartment in Riverside, Nairobi, where he went with Hajj Lutale.
Shortly after brief introductions to those present, the situation turned dark. Uninvited individuals knocked at the door and introduced themselves as Kenyan police.
“When they arrived there, and they entered the room, and were just being introduced to two people, the one he knew (British national) and another he didn’t know. And then a knock on the door, and it is announced that it’s the Kenya police that has arrived. It turns out it’s eight men in plain clothes. He could not tell who was who, but they say you are under arrest,” Byanyima narrated.
She added, “And in the room was this man and his friend with two guns and with a box of money, or so-called money; he (Besigye) doesn’t know whether it was money or not, and they said, You’re under arrest. And he said, wait a moment. I don’t know why this man came with two guns. I don’t know why he has this box of money. I did talk about fundraising, but I wasn’t expecting this. He didn’t have time. He was just taking photographs of it, and then the man who opened the door, the British man, had disappeared at this time, vanished, and he was left with one other man whom he didn’t know.”
However, officials say Besigye was in regular communication with the men he found in the apartment.
In one of the tapes, Besigye can be heard saying he needed funding for political mobilization.
Besigye also suggests using small coffee trading shops in Kampala and coffee traders in upcountry areas to create some form of layering to launder and clean the money.
Nevertheless, Byanyima said four of the eight men who had introduced themselves as Kenyan police, but would later turn out to be Ugandan forces, bundled Besigye and Hajj Lutale in the car and drove them the whole night towards the border with Uganda.
Byanyima said that they crossed the border into Uganda without making any stopover.
“It was clearly an operation well planned.”
As they drove towards Nakuru before crossing over to Uganda, the four men (initially introduced as Kenya police) started speaking in Uganda’s local language.
“That’s how they crossed them into Uganda and threw them into a military jail. They drove all night, they sat on them, and they arrived in Kampala when he could hardly walk,” said Byanyima.
Besigye and Hajj Lutale were charged in military court in Kampala and remanded to Luzira prison until December 2.
They deny all the charges against them.
