The mysterious detention of Kizza Besigye while on a visit to Kenya nearly two weeks ago has sparked widespread condemnation and fears of a clandestine exchange of intelligence between the two neighbours.
Besigye’se allies and wife have come out to reveal harrowing details of how the opposition chief was apparently lured to meet his abductors, said to have disguised themselves as Kenyan security agents.
Reports say he was spied on from the time he boarded a plane at Entebbe airport in Uganda for Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where he was picked up, before somehow being transferred to a military court back home without any extradition proceedings.
While Kenya insists it played no role and is investigating the incident, Uganda holds that Kenya was fully aware of the plan, citing intelligence correspondence aimed at tracking Besigye down.
As his detention is extended until next week by a military court in Kampala, we piece together what we know so far.
WHO IS KIZZA BESIGYE?
Besigye has contested and lost four presidential elections against President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
He has been less active in politics recently, and did not contest the 2021 election.
But earlier this year, he formed a new party, the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) after breaking away from the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which he founded two decades ago.
The opposition politician has for years travelled to Kenya and moved freely, sometimes to attend high-profile events – even while he remained Museveni’s main challenger and biggest critic.
WHAT LED UP TO BESIGYE’S DISAPPEARANCE?
This time, Besigye travelled to Nairobi to attend the launch of a book by Kenyan opposition politician Martha Karua.
The 68-year-old landed in the city on the morning of 16 November and took a taxi to his hotel in the affluent suburb of Hurlingham.
He was accompanied by long-term ally Hajj Obeid Lutale. A few hours later, he left the hotel, boarded a taxi and headed to Riverside Drive, some 5km (three miles) from his hotel, for a private meeting, according to his political allies.
This was the last time he was seen until he re-emerged in Uganda four days later.
His taxi driver said he waited for the veteran politician for more than 12 hours, before deciding to leave when he was unable to phone him.
Besigye’s team in Uganda started relaying distress calls after their leader’s mobile phones went unanswered.
His disappearance hit the headlines and raised eyebrows in the region, with his wife Winnie Byanyima, the head of the UN’s organisation to tackle HIV and Aids, taking to social media to report that her husband had been “kidnapped” in Nairobi.
The next day, his reserved seat at the book launch, where he was expected to be the guest speaker, remained empty with organisers raising the alarm about his absence.
HOW WAS BESIGYE PICKED UP?
Besigye and his friend Lutale arrived at the apartment along Riverside Drive where he was due to meet an unidentified Ugandan national and another unknown British national, according to Ms Byanyima.
The British national supposedly wanted to introduce Besigye to a group of colleagues and businessmen, who had expressed an interest in financially backing the PFF, she said. In the room there was a box of what appeared to be a stash of money.
One of the hosts had two guns. Shortly after a brief introduction, eight men in plain clothes who said they were Kenyan police officers knocked on the door and told Besigye and his associate they were under arrest, Ms Byanyima told Kenya’s Citizen TV.
The opposition chief tried to explain he had nothing to do with the items in the room, but the security agents did not listen.
Four of the men bundled Besigye and Lutale into a car with Kenyan number plates and drove them under the cover of night towards the border with Uganda.
“It was clearly an operation well planned,” Ms Byanyima added.
Before crossing over to Uganda, the four men switched from speaking Swahili and started talking in the Ugandan languages, Luganda and Runyankole.
The two captive were ferried to Uganda without their belongings, including their passports, which were later picked up by Besigye’s party officials from the Nairobi hotel.
PFF spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda told Uganda’s Monitor newspaper that Besigye and his friend went through the Malaba border post without stopping for routine security checks.
“They only changed vehicles. The four-wheel drive vehicle with the Kenyan number plate was left at the Malaba border post and moved to another vehicle with [a] Ugandan number plate,” he said.
Why was Besigye picked up in Nairobi and was he set up? Uganda’s Information Minister Chris Baryomunsi said detectives had gathered enough intelligence to arrest Besigye while in Nairobi.
He said the Kenyan authorities had enabled the cross-border operation, even though officials in Nairobi insist they knew nothing about it
by ROZANNE NTHAMBI