Leading Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye was “kidnapped” in Kenya and is being held in a Kampala military jail, according to his wife, a top UN official.
Winnie Byanyima, head of UNAIDS, demanded on X on Tuesday that the government of Uganda “release my husband Dr. Kizza Besigye from where he is being held immediately”.
The Ugandan authorities have been waging a crackdown on the opposition in recent months, arresting prominent leaders and putting members of opposition parties on trial.
Besigye, a medical doctor, “was kidnapped last Saturday while he was in Nairobi” to attend a book launch by Kenyan opposition politician Martha Karua, Byanyima said.
Her statement came after media in Uganda reported the disappearance of Besigye, a long-time critic of President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986.
Besigye, once a Museveni ally who has tried unsuccessfully several times since 2001 to unseat him in presidential elections, has often been targeted by the authorities.
“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” Byanyima said of her 68-year-old husband.
“We his family and his lawyers demand to see him.”
She said Besigye was “not a soldier”, demanding: “Why is he being held in a military jail?”
In July this year, 36 members of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) — the party Besigye founded two decades ago — were deported from neighbouring Kenya and put on trial in Uganda on terrorism charges.
They were freed on bail last month.
After their arrest, Besigye denounced the “junta” in power and claimed that the 36 “were illegally detained and sneaked back from Kenya”.
Museveni and Besigye were once close. They fought together in the bush war to overthrow Milton Obote, during which time Besigye served as Museveni’s trusted personal physician.
The two men eventually became political foes when Besigye broke ranks with the ruling National Resistance Movement to make a bid for the presidency in 2001, and later formed the FDC with other disaffected members of the NRM.
Besigye married Byanyima, who was previously romantically linked to Museveni, in 1999.
In the past, Besigye has faced accusations of treason and rape, frequent arrests and detentions, regular tear-gassings — both of him and his supporters — beatings and harassment.
Concerns have been mounting recently about Kenya’s involvement in such reported kidnappings.
Last month, Nairobi repatriated four Turkish refugees who rights groups say were abducted and forcibly returned in violation of international law.
It followed media reports that they had been kidnapped on the street in the Kenyan capital along with three others who were later released.
Turkish agents also abducted the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, in Kenya in 1999 after years on the run.
