By Nyang’au Araka
Ugandan opposition leader, Kizza Besigye who has been staying in Nairobi was reportedly taken back to his country under unclear circumstances.
Media reports indicate that according to Besigye’s wife, Winnie Byanyima, he was kidnapped and sent back home where he is being held in a military jail.
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In a post on X, Byanyima wrote that her husband had been seized in Kenya’s capital Nairobi last Saturday.
He was attending a book launch event when the arrest happened.
“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” she said.
Byanyima demanded that the government of Uganda release her husband.
“We his family and his lawyers demand to see him,” she wrote.
“He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”
Army spokesperson Felix Kulayigye told the Uganda Radio Network agency that he would be arraigned at a court later, according to a story published on BBC.
The officer did not expressly state if the military was holding him.
The Besigye story was broken by Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper, which reported that senior members of his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party had gathered at Makindye military court in Kampala, expecting him to appear there.
Meanwhile, Kenyan rights groups have voiced their concerns recently after a spate of forced deportations from the country, once regarded as a safe haven for refugees from across the region, and further afield.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KNHRC) has condemned “any form of abduction of those people who seek asylum in our country”.
Besigye, 68, led the FDC, contesting and losing four presidential elections against incumbent Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
Ms Byanyima is a human rights advocate and executive director of Unaids, the joint UN programme set up to eradicate Aids.
Besigye used to be Museveni’s personal doctor but went on to become an opposition leader.
The opposition figure has been arrested on numerous occasions in the past.
On one occasion he was shot in the hand, on another he suffered eye injuries after being doused in pepper spray.
The authorities accused him of provoking them, and he was charged with inciting violence.
Last month, four Turkish refugees were abducted by masked men at gunpoint in Nairobi and sent back to Turkey.
In July, 36 Ugandan opposition supporters who had travelled to the Kenyan city of Kisumu were deported without proper legal procedures, according to their lawyers.
-Additional reporting by BBC
