Kaweesi murder investigations

Abiriga joined high profile people killed by assassins including State prosecutor Joan Kagezi, UPDF’s Maj. Mohammad Kigundu and Assistant Inspector of General of Police (AIGP) Felix Kaweesi.

Abiriga’s slaying appears to have jolted Museveni into action. The President appears frustrated because for many years he had boasted about restoring security. He now appears helpless, unable to stop the slide into insecurity. His recent proposal to provide a pick-up escort car, complete with a small unit of armed guards for each of the 450 members of parliament has been criticised as knee-jerk, impractical, costly, ineffective, and not well thought out.

However, there is a sense that the VIP murders show a pattern of aiming “to instill fear, cause anxiety in the public and disaffection against government”.

They point at how all the VIPs have been killed in the same way; by assailants riding on motorbikes who waylaid them, showered their cars with bullets, and sped off.

Suspicions that someone known to Kaweesi killed him fueled more suspicion that this was an inside job. Kitagenda’s alleged confession, therefore, appeared intended to link the former police chief or some of his cronies to the murder of Kaweesi.

However, The Independent understands that Kitagenda has denied this and is said to be “uncooperative”.

Searching for evidence

Then, insiders say, when ISO agents under Col. Kaka Bagyenda recently raided MTN Uganda’s data centre in Mutundwe – allegedly over tax evasion allegations, the real target had to do with data on leads linking Kayihura to the Kaweesi murder.

According to MTN officials, they were not aware of any investigation by any government agency over tax evasion.

In a bid to further pin Kayihura, ISO has arraigned before cameras witnesses who claim that Kayihura released criminals who were behind the multiple attacks on civilians in the Greater Masaka area with machetes and pangas – the so-called ‘kijambiya’ gang.

In this case, Kayihura was reportedly in cahoots with Richard Ndaboine, the former head of cyber intelligence, Col. Ndahura Atwooki, the former head crime intelligence, and Herbert Muhangi, the former head of Flying Squad, among others. The CMI picked up Ndaboine last month.

Critics say all this is intended to implicate Kayihura and the officers that worked closely with him who are now under military detention.

Finally, The Independent has been told by sources close to the case, that the investigators from CMI and ISO are relying on about four elements in their bid to pin Kayihura; a recording in which Kayihura is said to be talking to the assassin, witnesses who claim to have driven the assassin to the scene of crime, the suspicion that Kayihura was threatened by Kaweesi’s rising star, and the actions of Kayihura’s aide, Jonathan Baroza, on the scene of crime.

Some of these aspects of the investigation were openly put to Kayihura on June 13 after Deputy Chief of Defence Forces Lt. Gen. Wilson Mbadi and the head of CMI; Brig. Abel Kandiho, arrested him from his farmhouse in Kashagama, Lyantonde District, flew him to Entebbe in a helicopter and immediately drove him to Makyindye Military Barracks, where he remains detained.

The same day, Kandiho and Charles Asiimwe, the head of CMI’s Joint Anti-Terrorism TaskForce (JATT), Grace Akullo, the Director CIID and her Deputy Elly Womanya and other detectives from police, and the Director General Internal Security Organisation (ISO), Rtd. Col. Kaka Bagyenda interrogated him.