Uganda’s military chief, the son of President Yoweri Museveni, says he is holding an opposition activist in his basement and has threatened violence against him, after the man’s party said he was abducted by armed men last week.
Eddie Mutwe, who also acts as the chief bodyguard for Uganda’s leading opposition figure, Bobi Wine, went missing last weekend after being grabbed near the capital Kampala by armed men, the National Unity Platform (NUP) party has said.
The police have said they do not have Mutwe, whose real name is Edward Ssebuufu, and until now there had been no word on his whereabouts.
In a series of posts on X late on Thursday, Chief of Defence Forces Muhoozi Kainerugaba posted what appeared to be a photograph of Mutwe, who was shirtless, and said he had captured him “like a grasshopper”.
Reuters was not immediately able to independently verify the photograph, but the NUP party later re-used it on their X handle in a post seeking support for Mutwe.
“He is in my basement … You are next!,” Kainerugaba wrote in a post responding to one from Wine about Mutwe’s disappearance.
“I still have to castrate him,” he said a few hours later, adding that he would release Mutwe only when Museveni gave the order.
The Uganda Human Rights Commission, a government body, on Thursday ordered Kainerugaba to release Mutwe, who they said had been unlawfully detained since April 26, or he would be “liable for contempt under… the constitution.”
Spokespeople for the Ugandan government, military and police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Uganda’s opposition has accused Museveni of fast-tracking Kainerugaba’s military career to prepare him to eventually succeed to the presidency, despite his son’s frequent inflammatory remarks on social media, including threats in 2022 to invade neighbouring Kenya and in January to behead Wine.
Wine is a popular musician-turned-politician who came second in the 2021 election.
