A 200-page dossier on the deteriorating security situation in the country, which was presented by President Museveni in two high level security meetings, eventually ended Gen Kale Kayihura’s 12 years at the helm of the police, PML Daily has learnt.
At the beginning of February, sources told this website that the President summoned to State House Entebbe the heads of key security agencies, among them police, Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI), Special Forces Command (SFC), External Security Organisation (ESO) and Internal Security Organisation (ISO).
Sources add that in the meeting, Mr Museveni expressed concern over the unresolved murders and kidnaps in the country and faulted police for not extensively investigating them and bringing to book the killers.
The President, sources add, kept reading from a document, in which he kept accusing police for the crimes. Sources add that he alluded to shooting of senior state prosecutor Joan Kagezi.
Highly placed sources that have accessed the document told this website that whereas police, in their investigations, had pinned the DR Congo-based Allied Democratic Forces rebels for the murder, a separate investigation by ISO placed some senior police officers at the scene of crime.
Sources added the document also contained information on the investigations regarding the assassination of former police spokesperson Andrew Kaweesi last year. Sources said whereas police had arrested and prosecuted some people over the murder, the report in the possession of the President indicated that the crime had a police hand in it.
At the end of the meeting, sources said, the President did not indicate the next course of action, leaving the security agencies guessing.
However, at the end of February, the President reportedly called another security meeting on the backdrop of the murder of Susan Magara, a 28-year-old accountant, and the revelation that two foreigners, earlier found dead in two Kampala hotels, had been poisoned.
Magara, who was kidnapped on February 7 from Kabaka Anjagala Road in Rubaga Division, Kampala, was later killed and her body discovered dumped at Kitiko, between Kigo and Kajjansi near the Entebbe Expressway. Tuomas Juha Petteri Teräsvuori from Finland, died at Pearl of Africa Hotel onFebruary 5, while Alex Sebastian from Sweden was found dead in his room at Sheraton Kampala Hotel on February 6.
The visibly angry President is said to have told the meeting that security agencies had failed to contain murder and crime in the country, notably pointing to the death of the foreigners and the kidnap of Susan, whose family is close to the President.
Mr Museveni is reported to have told the security officials that he had received complaints from foreign leaders that Uganda was no longer able to protect foreign citizens.
Sources add that the President, while reading from the document, accused Gen Kayihura of harboring police officers who were leaking state secrets to foreign countries, hence jeopardizing national security.
The President is said to have named a senior police officer and another aide to Gen Kayihura, who have been leaking state secrets. While reading from the dossier, he is said to have offered detailed evidence pinning the said officers, who have not been named for fear of jeopardizing investigations that are ongoing.
The furious Museveni is said to have read from the document and detailed how the police officers were trained abroad for the purpose and wondered what their mission and interest was.
This information is corroborated by the October 2017 arrest and detention of Senior Commissioner of Police Joel Aguma, Senior Superintendent of Police Nixon Agasirwe and five others by CMI over illegal extradition of perceived Rwandan dissident refugees from Uganda back home where they faced persecution and prosecution. Mr Mutabazi, a former escort of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was kidnapped in October 2013 from Sky Hotel in Naalya in Kampala and handed over to Rwandan security operatives. In 2014, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Sources add that on the release of the information and police names by the President, Gen Kayihura allegedly attempted to stand up and deny the allegations, claiming that he could not betray the President.
“But Mr President, I cannot be the one to undermine you; I cannot undermine you, sir,” the source quotes Gen Kayihura as saying. However, the furious President told him to keep quiet and sit down.
The President also informed the meeting that some police officers had connived to rob foreign investors of their money, while police officers were reportedly working with criminal gangs to commit crime and rob people.
The dossier reportedly contained information that Kifeesi and other criminal gangs, the Boda Boda 2010 were commanded by police officers.
Some members of Boda Boda 2010 were arrested in connection with the murder of Francis Ekalungar, 49, an accountant at Case Hospital in Kampala, whose body was burnt beyond recognition early this year. Sources say the President began to lose faith in police under the leadership of Gen Kayihura when he ordered CMI to take over the Ekalungar’s murder case and the arrest of senior police officers in the kidnap of the former body guard of Rwanda president Paul Kagame
It also contained information linking senior police officers to a group of mafias that deals in fake gold and that the group was immune from prosecution of any kind. Police last month confirmed that five of its officers, including Kampala Metropolitan South Regional Police Commander Siraj Bakaleke, were under investigation for allegedly extorting about Shs1.4 billion from two South Korean nationals.
Sources that from the security meeting, it was a matter of when and not if, Gen Kahiyura would be relieved of his job.
Speaking at the Women’s Day celebrations in Mityana District on Thursday, the President said criminals in the country were not being arrested because police had “bean weevils”, which he said have been since removed.
“We had captured the criminals but police had been infested by weevils. Those who were murdering women in Entebbe are in prison. The ones I don’t know yet are the ones who murdered Magezi, the Muslim clerics and Kaweesi,” he said.
Speaking to the vetting committee at Parliament where he appeared Wednesday morning to defend his appointment, incoming Inspector General of Police Martin Okoth Ochola blamed his predecessor, Gen Kayihura, for the mess in the police force.
Sources told PML Daily that Mr Ochola cited an incident when he ordered for the arrest of Bakaleke, who had been named in incidents of indiscipline, but Gen Kayihura ordered for his immediate release.
Mr Ochola, his deputy, Brig Sabiti Muzeyi, and Security minister Elly Tumwine were Wednesday flagged off to formally start work after their presidential appointments were approved by Parliament on Wednesday.
