Four Ugandan police officers banned from travelling to US over human rights abuse

Bob Kagarura (left) and Elly Womanya (right)

Kampala October 2–The United States of America has imposed sanctions on four senior Uganda Police Force commanders over alleged human rights violations.

Announcing the sanctions Wednesday October 2, the Department of United States said in part, “The Department of State is taking action today to promote accountability for human rights violations committed in Uganda by designating four members of the Uganda Police Force (UPF) due to their involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,”

The four individual senior Police officers affected are Bob Kagarura, the then-Wamala Regional Police Commander of the UPF; Alex Mwine, then-District Police Commander for the Mityana District of the UPF; Elly Womanya, then-Senior Commissioner within the UPF and Deputy Director of the UPF’s Criminal Investigations Division in charge of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU); and Hamdani Twesigye, then-Deputy Inspector of Police assigned to SIU. The four have been barred from traveling to the United States. 

 “As a result of today’s action, Kagarura, Mwine, Womanya, Twesigye and their immediate family members are generally ineligible for entry into the United States.”, the statement said.

They have been accused of being involved in human rights violations.

“The reports that Kagarura, Mwine, Twesigye, and Womanya were involved in gross violations of human rights, as documented by Ugandan civil court documents, civil society organizations, and independent journalists, are serious and credible,” said the statement.

However, senior government officials have since accused the United States of meddling in Uganda’s internal affairs and denied involvement in human rights abuses.

In April 2020 opposition Member of Parliament (MP) Francis Zaake was arrested by Police and military at his home in Mityana District accusing him of violating COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings when he distributed food to his constituents. 

Zaake appears in court inflicted in pain from torture during police custody.

He was taken to Iran-Uganda hospital where he received treatment. He later told journalists that upon his arrest, UPF officers under the watch of Mityana District police commander Alex Mwine and regional police commander Bob Kagarura beat him with sticks and batons, kicked him on his head, and then tied his legs and hands to suspend him under the bench in the flatbed on a police pickup truck, which drove him to the headquarters of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Mbuya.

The ministry of Internal Affairs concluded that Zaake must have inflicted his injuries on himself “by knocking himself on the metal of the UPF police pickup truck.” 

Zaake sued then CMI commander, Abel Kandiho, Mityana police commander Alex Mwine, SIU commander Elly Womanya, and three others for abusing him. 

On September 3, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) exercised its constitutional right and took over Zaake’s private suit against the security officers.