Ugandan security forces on Sunday arrested a former intelligence chief and outspoken critic of President Yoweri Museveni as tensions mount ahead of a presidential poll next month.
Sejusa’s arrest “followed a two-and-half-hour search by UPDF (Ugandan army) officers of the general’s home.
Gen. Sejusa also known as Tinyefunza, who has called President Museveni a dictator, is being detained at Makindye military barracks in the Ugandan capital Kampala, said his lawyer Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi.
Sejusa’s home was surrounded by armed military police early Sunday, he said.
Sejusa’s arrest is likely to raise tensions ahead of presidential elections on February 18.
Museveni, who is campaigning for re-election, has ruled Uganda since 1986, when he led a group of rebels who had waged a bush war against a government they accused of rigging elections.
Sejusa was one of the senior commanders of those rebels and eventually became a four-star general, was on the military high command and led Uganda’s domestic and external spy agencies.
Now Sejusa openly accuses Mr Museveni of violating the ideals for which they waged that guerrilla war.
In 2013, Sejusa wrote a letter to the domestic spy chief urging him to investigate allegations of a plot to kill high-ranking government officials seen as being opposed to the political rise of Museveni’s son, a brigadier who commands the country’s special forces. Facing likely arrest, Sejusa, who, was traveling in Europe at the time, sought asylum in London. He quietly returned home in Dec. 2014.
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