Prime
‘I nearly captured Museveni in Mbale’– Part II
Mr Albert Otwabe (L) and his cousin Mr Ezekiel Okodi. It was while at Okodi’s house at Maluku Housing Estate in Mbale Town that Otwabe witnessed Museveni’s near capture. Photo by Faustin Mugabe
At around 5am, a vehicle came to transport us to Kampala. They had come with a minibus and a Peugeot 504.
My brother-in-law and another fat man working with UEB [Uganda Electricity Board] were put in the boot of the Peugeot.
From the Military Police base in Mbale, we branched to Bugema Military Barracks to refuel. From there, the soldiers opened the boot, got the two men out. One soldier came with a glittering panga and chopped off the UEB man’s head. I saw it with my eyes.
Blood came out of the aorta like a human being urinating. The soldier also wanted to hit my brother with the panga, but his colleague said: ‘Wacha yeye. Ninamujua’ (Spare him, I know him}.
We were packed in the car and I was put down. Nine of them [captives] sat over me. I was in pain. But the soldier seated at the back of the car kept hitting my head with a gun saying, ‘Don’t look at me.’
When we reached Busitema, one soldier who was sympathetic said, ‘Let us remove this one from down and put another one there.’ From there, I was put on the third position to the top.
We drove up to Jinja. At Owen Falls Dam, the soldiers wanted to throw us into the River Nile. But the soldiers who had come from Kampala said, ‘What shall we say when they ask about the guerrillas we had come to collect?’
Then one said, ‘We shall say they have escaped.’
‘How can you say they have escaped when they were not armed?’ another replied. We were spared.
On reaching Mabira Forest, the car tyre burst. During the process of changing of the tyre, soldiers said guerrillas have bad omen and one of them said, ‘Let’s shoot them and throw them into the forest.’ But another one who had come from Kampala refused. That was at around midday.
When we arrived at Makindye Military Barracks, in Kampala, a bell was sounded and soldiers assembled. They told them they had brought guerrillas.
The soldiers said: ‘These are the people who have been killing us.’ They again laid us down on our backs. I did not know that the vehicle we were in had guns, bullets, grenades, projectors and maps captured from the guerrillas in a forest in Mbale.
Museveni and his fellow guerrillas were cornered by the Uganda Army at Maluku Housing Estates in Mbale Town in 1973
They offloaded them and said “these are the things we got with these people”.
I said, ‘My God, I’m finished’.”
At this moment, the soft and slow speaking Albert Otwabe holds back tears.
“When I reached that point [of the torture] I feel…,” he suddenly stops talking and excuses himself for a short call. I peeped at him in the ‘washroom’ and saw him wiping his nose and looking up, probably to hold back tears.
However, when he returned, Otwabe continued with his story.
“We were told to lay down again facing the sun. A very fat soldier came. I thought he was Amin, but it was Col Ozzo. He is the one who kicked me here [shows behind the ear].
He said, ‘See the colour of your blood before you die. You have been killing our soldiers.’
When I touched there, I saw blood in my hands. Then soldiers forced us to eat murram [soil] and said in Swahili, ‘Kula njugu’ (Eat ground nuts).
They also started walking on our stomachs. Others brought dry pepper and poured it in our eyes and told us to look up into the sun. Can you imagine Kamuraari (pepper) in your eyes and they tell you to look up in the sun?
After torturing us, they put us inside cells. It was C1. It was underground. Even when it is day time, there it is night. We were there for two days and two nights. Then they brought us outside to make statements.
I was guarded by one soldier and one intelligence officer who was recording the statement. He forced me to accept that I am a Mugisu.
‘Why?’ I asked. By then, there were many Bagisu who had run away with Obote to exile after he was toppled by the Amin regime in 1971.
I said, ‘How can you force me to be a Mugisu, if you bring here a Mugisu, what will I say?’ adding that I know only two languages: English and Itesot.
‘What do you do?’ the soldiers asked.
‘I’m a medical student,’ I answered.
‘If you are a student, why did you go to Tanzania to train as a guerrilla?’
‘I have never left Uganda since I was born and I even don’t know how to handle a gun.’
I was then taken to another officer who asked me, ‘Do you know the person you were chasing?’
‘No,’ I replied.
He recorded my statement and said, ‘Sign here.’
‘No,’ I replied again.
‘Can I read the statement again for you?’
‘There is no need.’
‘Can you sign?’
‘Let me sign my death certificate,’ I said finally.
The army officer then told me I was innocent, but was not sure if I would leave the Makindye Military jail.”
Otwabe had been arrested with Sebastian Namirundi, a pupil, and Capt Tom Masaba who were publicly executed on February 10, 1973, by firing squad.
Otwabe freed
“While in jail, there was a Musoga man who was caught looting. He was arrested and brought to Makindye Barracks and died in jail. He had been badly beaten. When he died, the soldiers told us to put the body on a pick-up and go and bury him.
But there was a soldier who said I should not be taken. Of course, there was a rumour that whenever soldiers killed people at night, prisoners would carry the body with them and after the burial, they would also be killed and buried there.
That night, the prisoners who carried the dead body never came back. This soldier saved me. He was also an Atesot from Tororo.
It was him, I requested, to inform my people and the school where I was. He is the one who gave me a paper and a marker where I scribbled my address and he is the one who posted the letter to Mbale. That is how they came to know where I was.
My people had looked for my body around Tirinyi swamp but couldn’t find it. After information had reached my school, they [school authorities] contacted the commanding officer of Mbale Military Police headquarters.
From there, contacts were made with the minister of Health, Henry Kyemba, who talked to Amin who ordered Marela, the commanding officer of military police at Makindye barracks, to release me. That is how I was released.”
When Sunday Monitor contacted Kyemba to comment on this incident, he could not recall his assistance to Otwabe, but said: “Saving even a single life is worth it. Many times we tried to save lives but failed, including my own brother [R.L Kisajja] who was killed in 1972. So if I saved that one, then it was worth it.”
Until 1998 when Onapito Ekomoloit, a journalist then, told him, Otwabe did not know that the “thief” he was pursuing from Maumbe’s house in 1973 was actually Uganda’s President today.
Who is Otwabe?
Otwabe was born on December 25, 1948, in Gogonyo village, Pallisa District, formerly in Tororo District. He graduated in June 1973 as a medical assistant and was posted to Mulago hospital where he worked until 2008 when he was retired.
He is married to a Mukiga woman from Nyarushanje, Rukungiri District. While Otwabe stays in Pallisa, his wife lives in Kampala with some of the children. They are married with six children; three boys and three girls. Three others died.
