In the on going chess game of politics
Besigye brother plucked out of bus
By Henry H. Ssali &Mercy Nalugo
Feb 11, 2004
KAMPALA - Security agencies on Sunday blocked Dr Kizza Besigye's brother, Mr Joseph Musasizi, from travelling to Tanzania.Besigye is the chairman of the Reform Agenda, an opposition group formed after his failed presidential bid in 2001. He lives in exile mainly South Africa. Musasizi, 39, told The Monitor that he was travelling to Arusha.
He said security agents from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CID and Special Revenue Police Service pulled him out of a Nairobi-bound Akamba bus on Dewinton Road at about 3 p.m. on Sunday. The bus was about to leave the Akamba parking yard."It is not my department involved in that.
I don't know," military intelligence chief Col. Noble Mayombo said in denying involvement.The CID boss Elizabeth Kuteesa also denied knowledge of the incident. Musasizi told journalists during the Reform Agenda's weekly news briefing on Monday that the security people were commanded by Lt. Fred Tusherure.
He said that they took away his passport, identity card and two bus tickets worth Shs 48,000. He said his luggage was also checked. He said he was taken to Kololo Summit View in a CMI house where he remained in his captors' vehicle as they held a meeting in the house.Capt. Joseph Kamusiime, a deputy director of CMI who sits at the Summit View House, said he had no information on Musasizi having been stopped from travelling.
Musasizi said that from Summit View he was taken to the CMI headquarters in Kitante before being driven to his home in Namasuba, Kalina Zone, where LC officials were called and his house searched.He said the security personnel took away Reform Agenda documents and others including academic papers and business cards.When The Monitor reached Musasizi's house at about 8 p.m. on Sunday, uniformed military men were standing guard near his home.
Plainclothes men led him away, but after a short distance, one of the officers made a telephone call and after told Musasizi to return home. He said he was neither beaten nor tortured.The passport was returned to him on Monday morning. Musasizi, who operates a TOTAL filling station and supermarket at Nsambya, said he was going to Tanzania on a business trip. He said the security operatives asked him to account for his movements on Friday and Saturday. The Reform Agenda also launched its magazine, Reform Uganda at the same briefing.
The Reform Agenda General Secretary, Mr Geoffrey Ekanya, said the magazine will be published monthly and all political organisations, including the National Resistance Movement, will have an opportunity to present their views to the masses through the publication.
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
