Richard Wanambwa & Grace Matsiko
27 July 2008
By whom and how was the operation to arrest the three Mengo officials executed. The officials were released on Friday after a week in detention in up country jails. An Inside Politics investigation team reveals the people behind the arrests and how they planned and executed the well choreographed move.
Mr Medard Segona Lubega, the Buganda Kingdom deputy information minister was snatched outside his office on Johnson Street around midmorning. He was rushing to attend the inaugural Buganda Conference at Hotel Africana.
Ms Betty Nambooze and Mr Charles Peter Mayiga attended the conference peacefully but were waylaid at different points at night. Ms Nam-booze was waylaid at the Spear Motors traffic lights in Nakawa at about 9.30 p.m. as she drove home and Mr Mayiga was picked at his Ekitoobero Restaurant and Bar business on Nakasero Road at around 11.30 p.m. The questions that remain are: how was it planned, who ordered and who executed the arrests and for what purpose?
Initially, the police said it was not part of the operation that arrested the officials. Members in the force tell Inside Politics that the police was only brought in to sanitise the arrests and show that government was acting within the law. Our investigations reveal that no single security or intelligence agency carried out the arrests, instead trusted individuals hand-picked from various units were assigned the job.
A source tells us that the arrests were planned earlier but were delayed for fear of a backlash if it had interfered with the Buganda Conference which was attended by the Kabaka.
"If we had arrested these people on Thursday that means the Buganda conference was to be stopped as well because if it had gone ahead, Mengo would have mobilised and used it to whip up people's emotions," the source said. "To avoid having many issues at hand, it was decided that we conduct it (the arrests) on Friday when the conference was already in progress and the officials would be busy."
"We had anticipated resistance and probably a demonstration. So the arrests were done in away that it did not suck in many people," the source said.
Plot II Mabua Road:
The property was at the centre of recent controversy between the Mayor of Kampala and the Coordinator of Intelligence Services. It was recently boarded off (covered in iron sheets) to appear like some renovation work was going on but our sources now say this is where the rehearsals for the operation were done.
A source working with the joint anti-terrorism task force tells us that 14 operatives from the Joint Anti Terrorism Task Force (JATT) were part of the operation. For days, they followed and through wire taps, listened into the telephone conversations of the suspects until they struck.
He said that two armed plain clothed personnel acting as 'Observation Posts' were dispatched to Mr Lubega's office at London Chambers at 8 a.m. They saw him enter and relayed the message to Mr Elly Womanya, the Police's head of crime intelligence. Mr Womanya later calls for a Police patrol vehicle and which was then parked at CPS.
The vehicle was later moved and parked at Pioneer Mall. At around 10.45 a.m. the surveillance team saw Mr Lubega fold his files ready to leave office and they called for the police patrol to move closer to the chamber where the arrest took place.
"There were instructions that no arrest should be conducted at the venue of the conference because there was a risk of violence," an officer said. At Hotel Africana, the venue of the conference, working with a mole in Mengo, three officers were deployed in the hotel lobby and another at Caltex on Wampewo Avenue opposit the hotel.
"This person outside (at Caltex) was to monitor any suspicious movement," the officer said. He said, security had been alerted that Ms Nambooze and Mr Lubega were aware security wanted to arrest them and would have planned to escape.
As the conference came to an end, an unarmed man was driven to the hotel and joined their colleagues in the lobby. To avoid detection by the security guards at the hotel, the operatives left guns in a vehicle in the parking lot with a driver and another operative.
At around 9 p.m, a corolla saloon car with civilian registration numbers was dispatched near UMA Show Ground at Lugogo to wait for Ms Nambooze as she drove home.
When Nambooze, her husband, a relative and a Mukono district councillor identified as Jamil Kakembo drove out of the hotel, a pick-up double-cabin with tinted windows, drove out as well, following them at close range. As the two vehicles descended on the Lugoogo stretch, the saloon car that had been waiting near UMA grounds was signalled to intercept and arrest Nambooze.
It has also emerged that Gen. David Tinyefuza, Coordinator of Security Agencies, was not directly involved in the coordination although his facility at Kololo was used for coordination purposes. Gen. Tinyefuza told Daily Monitor on Wednesday that he had not participated directly in the arrests but he was in full support of the police action. He also defended the continued detention of the three even after it went beyond the constitutional limit of 48 hours.
"They were arrested by police, but I entirely agree with police, I am entirely in support of what they are doing," Gen. Tinnyefuza told Daily Monitor.
however, sources in the spying agencies intimated to Inside Politics how the coordination and arrests created sharp disagreement among the heads of different departments, especially after Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura denied knowledge of the arrests as he met some of his senior officers in Masindi that Friday.
Internal Affairs Minister Dr Ruhakana Rukunda, Gen. Kayihura and a host of other top police officials were in Masindi on Friday last week when the arrests took place.
It has emerged that a plan to transfer the three to Kirinya Prisons in Jinja was discussed but quickly ruled out because of the short distance between Kampala and Jinja and yet the government aimed at distancing the trio from their families and the Buganda supporters in anticipation of demonstrations.
"The move to transfer them to up-country prisons was calculated basing on the past scenario, where Kampala and other towns near the city were plunged into chaos following the arrest of FDC President Dr Kizza Besigye," the source said.
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