More ISO Operatives Lined Up For Interrogation

President Museveni wrote a communique to the country’s army and police chiefs, warning against the torture of suspects.

Yoweri Museveni’s letter came barely two weeks after suspects arrested in connection with the murder of Andrew Felix Kaweesi submitted court evidence of having been tortured.

A week later, gruesome pictures surfaced of a town mayor with gaping wounds on his knees and ankles which were said to have been inflicted by police.

In his letter, Museveni told the security forces that extracting confessions was not necessary if investigators got results from fingerprints, photographs, DNA tests, and other scientific methods to secure convictions.

“Somebody may admit guilt when he is innocent in order to be spared being tortured,” the communique read.

Museveni also warned against “defective shortcuts” adding that “evidence through torture is not reliable”.

While appearing before a committee of Parliament over reports of torture, Security Minister Gen. Elly Tumwine said:

“There is noth­ing which is open to every­one, there are lim­i­ta­tions to every­thing even in your house, and there are ar­eas which some peo­ple don’t reach. There are ar­eas which for se­cu­rity rea­sons, this com­mit­tee is not al­lowed to visit.”

This was a state­ment by Gen. Elly Tumwine while ap­pear­ing be­fore the Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee of Hu­man Rights. The Min­is­ter had been in­vited to up­date the com­mit­tee on the state of Safehouses in Uganda.

Tumwine was summoned to comment following a mo­tion raised be­fore Parliament by Kawempe North’s Hon. La­tif Sse­bag­gala, Lwemiyaga County MP Theo­dre Sekikubo, and Hon. Kasiano Wadiri for Gen Tumwine to ex­plain what the Gov­ern­ment con­ducted il­le­gal ar­rests and de­ten­tions of Ugan­dans in “safe houses” with­out trial.

In a heated dis­cus­sion, the Com­mit­tee de­manded that the Min­is­ter re­spond to among other things; whether in­deed there were safe houses in Uganda, the num­ber of safe houses, un­der which laws they were op­er­at­ing, how peo­ple were taken to safe houses, who qual­i­fied to be kept in safe houses and why was it that ma­jor­ity of per­sons who were be­ing kept the safe houses were from the op­po­si­tion par­ties specif­i­cally, “peo­ple power.”(Pres­sure group)

Gen­eral Tumwine in­formed the com­mit­tee that Uganda had safe houses and noted that safe houses were se­cure places used for in­tel­li­gence work. He fur­ther said that all in­tel­li­gence and se­cu­rity agen­cies world over op­er­ate safe houses and that the run­ning of safe houses was not pe­cu­liar to Uganda but a world­wide in­tel­li­gence prac­tice.

He high­lighted that some func­tions of a safe house in Uganda in­cluded:
• To co­or­di­nate clan­des­tine in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions
• To de­brief and re-brief in­tel­li­gence as­sets
• To se­cure and pro­tect wit­nesses in dan­ger, es­pe­cially crim­i­nals who have turned into wit­nesses
• To se­cure per­sons who come seek­ing to be pro­tected by the state for var­i­ous se­cu­rity rea­sons
• To man­age hard-core crim­i­nals who re­quire a long time to re­form and now need ob­ser­va­tion and sur­veil­lance.