It is now exactly 4 days since Ronald Nahabwe, a journalist with The Capital Times, an online news publication, was arrested and detained at the Special Investigations Division (SIU), Kireka, where is he has been in detention for days without the police pressing any charges against him.
We have established that Nahabwe was arrested on orders of the Grace Akullo, the Director Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) and a one Henry Mugumya, a CID officer at Kibuli.
According to his lawyers, since his arrest, the only questions that police detectives are asking Nahabwe is to reveal that sources of stories he has been publishing about scandals at the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and a letter written by Archbishop Dr Cyprian Kizito Lwanga to president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, complaining about city lawyers Ebert Byenkya and a one Galisonga, who allegedly conned billions of church money.
The latest we learnt is that after torturing Nahabwe, detectives on Monday evening drove him to his home in Bakuli for a search but they never found anything to incriminate him. They only picked a flash disc from his house which they went with as they returned him to SIU in Kireka, where he has since been subjected to torture, with intent to coerce him into revealing his sources.
On Tuesday, they brought him to Kibuli CID headquarters to record a statement.
He did, after which they took him back to Kireka
He spent the whole of Wednesday in detention at SIU on orders of Mugumya.
However, we have since learnt that detectives at SIU found out that the guy was innocent and requested Mugumya to pick his client, which he has since refused to do.
Our insiders at SIU reveal that senior officers have started complaining that continued detention of Nahabwe will cause them problems because it is against the law to detain someone who has not committed any crime.’’
However, because of Mugumya’s ego and the people who are pushing him, an innocent man with a family to look after is rotting in a police cell for helping government to expose corrupt individuals in the country.
However, this comes a few days after Nahabwe’s colleague and co-worker Hannington Mbabazi was abducted by armed men, who also demanded that he tells them the source of the REA and other stories that he published on The Capital Times website.
Mbabazi was arrested three weeks ago from his home in Nateete at around 8:00Pm, by plain clothed operatives, who later handed him over to three armed men, donned in UPDF army uniforms, who had been waiting outside his gate.
They later whisked him away to Kyengera SAFE HOUSE, tortured him the whole night and later dropped him at CIID Kibuli in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the next day.
While under their custody, they allegedly demanded him to reveal the source of the stories about REA that they run, which he declined, and that earned him further torture while in their car on the way to Kyengera.
But it should be noted that as Journalists, we are protected by the law not to reveal our sources unless, through a court order, which they don’t have so far.