Reports say Ugandan general hiding in London
David Sejusa given UK police protection after leaking letter alleging plot to kill senior officials, his lawyer says.
A Ugandan general who leaked a letter alleging an assassination plot against army officers opposed to the president’s son succeeding his father as leader has requested the protection of British police.
David Sejusa, a spy chief who sits on Uganda’s military high command, will not return home anytime soon, the Associated Press reported on Sunday, quoting the general’s lawyer, Joseph Luzige.
Luzige said Sejusa was hiding from Ugandan undercover agents allegedly sent to track him down in London, where he has been since a local newspaper published a story about his letter.
“Sejusa told me there is a team of people who have been sent to London to hunt him down,” the attorney said. “He said these people’s intentions are not good at all.”
Luzige said Sejusa believes his life is in danger and is now “very cautious”.
The lawyer’s claims could not be independently verified.
Judith Nabakooba, the spokeswoman for Ugandan police, said she had no comment on this matter. “I’ve not been briefed,” she said.
Sejusa, who directs Uganda’s domestic and foreign spy agencies, recently wrote a letter to the internal security service urging an investigation into reports that those opposed to the rise of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s son risk assassination.
Rapid promotion
Museveni’s son, a brigadier named Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has been rapidly promoted and received military training at prestigious academies like Sandhurst in Britain and Fort Leavenworth in the United States.
Kainerugaba also heads an elite army unit that protects the president and national assets like oil fields.
Details of Sejusa’s letter were published by Daily Monitor newspaper whose premises have since been occupied by police looking for evidence against Sejusa.
Sejusa cited himself, Uganda’s prime minister and another general who has been the head of the army but has since been moved to the interior ministry among those at risk of being assassinated for being against Kainerugaba succeeding his father as president.
The general’s concerns have stirred controversy in Uganda, where divisions among the military elite are rarely revealed in public.
Uganda’s army leadership has accused Sejusa of breaking the country’s military laws, while a government minister who speaks for Museveni said the general has “clear presidential ambitions”.
Museveni, who has held power in Uganda for nearly three decades, has never said he sees his son as his political heir. But the son has been fast-tracked and last year he was promoted to the rank of brigadier.
Sejusa, a decorated hero of the bush war that brought Museveni to power in 1986, has a history of standing up to the president.
In the 1990s he tried and failed to quit the army after accusing its leadership of incompetence in battles against the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).