KAMPALA – Security around sickbeds of MPs Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine and Francis Zaake has been tightened following revelations that several state operatives have been sent to US and India to monitor how the two legislators are receiving treatment.
Mityana Municipality MP Zaake, who was on Monday allowed to leave the country after spending two weeks at Lubaga Hospital, has been admitted to the intensive care unit of Manipal hospital in India, while Bobi Wine (Kyadondo East) has been checked into a specialized hospital in Washington DC, US.
And now it has emerged that family members of the frail legislators have requested the management of the respective hospitals to intensify surveillance around the MPs’ wards, ostensibly to ward off any “wrong elements” from harming them.
This website could not get reach out to Bobi Wine’s wife Barbara Itungo to confirm the revelations but Zaake’s wife Bridget Namirembe confirmed that security around the unit where her husband is admitted is tight but did not link it to any threat of harm.
However, highly placed sources in Police have intimated to this website that the Director of Police’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), Ms Grace Akullo, has sent eight detectives to US and India to monitor the MPs’ conditions and what they have been diagnosed with.
The sources added that the team is being led by Mr Joseph Obwana. “The detectives are supposed to get copies of the MPs’ medical examinations and also engage with doctors at their respective hospitals purposely to understand the magnitude of their injuries. A report will be made by the detectives and it will be used in their ongoing trial,” the source said.
When contacted, Police spokesperson Emilian Kayima said he was not aware of the development and directed us to CID spokesperson Vicent Ssekatte, who did not pick our repeated calls.
It is not clear why Police is interested in the medical results or mode of treatment the MPs are receiving abroad.
Before departure, the two legislators had been blocked by police and later checked into at Kiruddu hospital, where government later claimed it sought to subject them to the medical examination. Police spokesperson Emilian Kayima, in a statement, indicated that after the torture allegations against the MPs were brought to their attention by the Uganda Law Society, they had to ascertain whether this was true by subjecting him to a medical test, which he said had to be done in a government hospital.
Whereas the two MPs have accused the President’s Special Forces Command of torturing them during their arrest in Arua Municipality, necessitating them to travel abroad for further treatment, government insists they are not as bad as feared and can be treated locally.
Bobi Wine, while recounting what happened since his detention both in Arua and Makindye military barracks, revealed that SFC soldiers found him locked up in a room of Pacific Hotel from where they beat him up to near death.
“In the wee hours of the morning, the soldiers started breaking doors of the different hotel rooms. With rage, they broke doors, and I knew they would soon come to my room. I, therefore, put my wallet and phone into my socks. I also had with me some money which I had earned from a previous music show. I also put it into the socks,” he said in a dossier published on his social media pages.
The statement has put government and security forces in a difficult position as the international community and human rights bodies have accused the State of torturing its citizens and failure to respect the country’s constitution and human rights values.
