Court orders government to produce two missing Kenyan activists

  What you need to know: The government has been given an ultimatum to produce the two activists by October 21. Thank you fo...

 

What you need to know:

• The government has been given an ultimatum to produce the two activists by October 21.

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The High Court in Kampala ordered government on October 14 to produce two Kenyan political activists who went missing about a fortnight ago, moments after they attended a campaign rally of the Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) in the eastern district of Kaliro, “dead” or “alive”.

According to the orders issued by the presiding judge, Mr Simon Peter Kinobe, the government has been given an ultimatum to produce the two activists by October 21.

The activists are Mr Nicholas Oyoo and Mr Bob Njagi.

On October 6, the duo, through their lawyers of Kiiza & Mugisha, sued the Chief of Defence Forces, the Chief of Defence Intelligence and Security, the Inspector General of Police, and the Attorney General, seeking the court’s intervention for release from what they called incommunicado detention.

Mr Koffi Atinda, a colleague of Mr Njagi, who reportedly witnessed the alleged abduction, in his affidavit to support the court action against the State security agencies listed above, avers that the security agents abducted his colleagues after NUP presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine’s rally and that they are currently being held in Mbuya, Kampala.

“The respondent’s military arrest and detention of the applicants at the second respondent’s detention facility since Wednesday, October 1, in Mbuya is incommunicado detention, illegal and unlawful,” Mr Koffi asserts in his affidavit.

He adds: “The applicants have since been in an illegal and incommunicado detention for more than 48 hours, and they in incommunicado without trial or any charges preferred against them.”

Mr Koffi explains that his colleagues, who are Kenyan nationals and belong to the African Movement, had come to Uganda to show their support for presidential candidate Kyagulanyi, who is also their personal friend, when they were abducted.

“It's during their stay and visit in Uganda that they were brutally arrested by men wielding guns in both military and civilian clothes around Kaliro District at Stabex Petrol Station in eastern Uganda, where they had parked their vehicle,” Mr Koffi avers.

He adds: “I witnessed the arrest and survived the arrest by a whisker. They were taken in a Toyota Hiace Van commonly known as drone and whisked away at a terrible speed to a place one of them told me was Mbuya.”

Mr Koffi says the friends and family of the duo are worried that they could be subjected to torture at the hands of the military, which he accused of having a record to harassing, and persecuting critics of President Museveni and his inner circle.

The issuance of the court directive comes barely a day after the chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission, Ms Mariam Wangadya, said that despite receiving a petition from the family of the missing activists, the Commission was unable to commence carrying out investigations into their whereabouts since there was already a pending court case about the same.

“They (family of the missing duo) applied for habeas corpus in the High Court. Article 53 of the Constitution bars us from intervening in any matter that is in court, and the moment you file a court action about any matter, then you have taken us out of the jurisdiction,” Ms Wangadya said.

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