Prime
Mayombo & Gen Muhoozi… ‘pretty boy’ faces of a brutal military outfit
What you need to know:
- Turns out the UPDF, our very professional and enlightened, law-abiding army, which is not like those very bad armies of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, simply ignored the order.
A few days ago, I received an urgent call to resume pursuit of the case of Michael Ogwang, detained by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF)…without charges, as usual. I’d actually forgotten about Ogwang, since I got a release order from Justice Musa Ssekaana at the High Court and handed it over to a colleague to serve the UPDF and secure his release, then I left for Europe - over a year ago.
Turns out the UPDF, our very professional and enlightened, law-abiding army, which is not like those very bad armies of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, simply ignored the order.
The Ogwang case was one of very many I handled in that period; people picked up, usually by the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) then taken to CMI headquarters in Mbuya, tortured brutally and kept indefinitely there, or at Military Police, Makindye; or the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Kireka.
In 2017, my lawyer brother, the distinguished Eron Kiiza, asked me to handle the matter of a Rwandan national, Fidel Gatsinzi; so I filed a motion for his release…and drove to CMI Headquarters to demand his freedom. Eventually they released him, dumping him at the Uganda-Rwanda border point of Katuna, in an illegal deportation manoeuvre. I immediately went to meet Fidel.
When I saw what had been done to him, I returned home sick, depressed and horrified. It is a story that has kept repeating itself with different people. Can’t help entertaining the hypothesis that people who fall into the hands of CMI automatically qualify for heaven, because the God of Heaven probably deems them to have served punishment sufficient for whatever sins they may have committed.
I was the last journalist to interview the man who made CMI famous – Brig Gen Noble Mayombo, bless his soul. I had no idea he’d die shortly thereafter (May 1, 2007), because he was so full of life. He’d taken a glass or two of whisky or wine; it was all over him, and he was all jolly and laughing. Mayombo, a highly qualified lawyer, was very intelligent, humorous, outgoing and handsome with a chubby baby face. Americans would call him ‘pretty boy’. It was hard not to like Mayombo. So I was disturbed that he was heading a CMI that was at the time being accused of using unthinkable methods of torture, which even Lucifer himself would find extremely repulsive. “What specialty was your Master of Laws (LLM) degree?” I asked.
“Human rights!” he replied, proudly. I was aghast! I asked him how a human rights lawyer could preside over a CMI that was torturing and killing. He laughed. He was high. In fact when the interview – on live television – was ending, he walked away prematurely, with the microphone, something I kept teasing him about.
In 2019, frustrated by the CMI over more detainees, I drove to Ministry of Defence headquarters, Mbuya Hill, to meet the one Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) I’d never met - Gen David Muhoozi - and serve him with a court order. He is hard to get to. His aides were still demanding to know what I wanted, when the man himself came along and surprised them – and me too – with a “how are you Mr Tegulle?”
Members of his tribe can be really handsome when they decide to; and Gen Muhoozi clearly, did make that decision – he’s Mr Pretty Boy too. Again, I was taken aback.
A really nice, very polite, very likeable fellow, said to be a practicing Christian; presiding over a military that is doing really brutal things to the people it purports to defend. Gen Muhoozi’s army has no regard for rule of law or human life, disrespects court orders, brutalises people unlucky to fall into its hands and detains innocent people without trial for years and years. I still wonder how Gen Muhoozi takes his tea in peace at his desk when, below him, helpless sons, daughters, fathers and mothers of people are being tortured in the dungeons of CMI.
Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda [email protected]
