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MPs confirm snake torture in ‘safe houses’
By Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda
Members of Parliament who last week visited prisoners at Kigo Prison have confirmed allegations that security personnel use snakes and red ants to extract confessions from suspects.The MPs on the Parliamentary committee on Defence and Internal Affairs visited Kigo Prison off Entebbe Road on 19 February and interviewed prisoners, mostly those on treason charges.
Mr Joseph Kule Muranga (Busongora North) led the parliamentary team.
The committee chairman Simon Mayende did not accompany the delegation.
The committee went to Kigo Prison following allegations by some MPs in the House that they had received reports that snakes, crocodiles and red ants are unleashed on prisoners to force them to confess.
“Some of the prisoners said they were badly tortured. Two of them showed me their testicles which they claimed were smashed,” committee member Mr Harry Kasigwa told The Monitor yesterday.
Kasigwa is MP for Jinja Municipality West.
He said some of the prisoners had scars on their buttocks, which showed that they had been seriously caned.
“One of them said his buttocks were knifed,” the MP said. He said some prisoners told the committee that security agencies pierced their nails with pins.
“One of them had a panga [machete] cut in his head,” Mr Kasigwa said.
He said prisoners claimed that 461 inmates were at one time kept in an underground prison in Makindye army barracks.
But Army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza dismissed that claim.
He said MPs have the powers under the law to access any Defence installations.
He said they should photograph those inmates and move a motion in Parliament.
Mr Kasigwa said inmates Wilson Kyaligonza and Nicholas Ruzinda had wounds.
He said Lt. Dan Mugarura told the committee that he was blindfolded after his arrest and was dumped inside a ‘safe house’ (ungazetted detention centres).
He said Mugarura told the MPs that he was once put in a room full of red ants and later in another one where ther! e was a snake.
Mr Kasigwa said the chairman of Bugantira LC-III in Gulu was also severely tortured.
He said a woman called Lagulu, who was picked with 19 others from Gulu Prison by the army, said she was sexually abused while in Gulu army barracks.
Maj. Bantariza refuted all these claims.
He said if the army wanted to torture people it wouldn’t use such primitive methods.
Treason suspects who were transferred from Gulu to Kigo told the committee that while in Gulu they used a single basin as a urinal, toilet and food utensil.
There are 98 treason suspects at Kigo and 104 others who were arrested by Operation Wembley soldiers.
“Wembley suspects are the most tortured,” Mr Kasigwa said.
In total there are 720 prisoners at Kigo but the prison was constructed to accommodate 420.
Aswa MP Ronald Reagan Okumu, who has been following the case of Gulu treason suspects, said the inmates had told him of these horrible stories.
The committee will make its report this week and table it before Parliament.
February 25, 2003 12:14:09
Gook
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of bad people but also for the appalling silence of good people". M.L.King
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