Former Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka was brutally killed during the reign of Idi Amin Dada but now there are claims that president Museveni was among soldiers who killed him.
Kiwanuka was one of the key figures that led Uganda in the transition from British colonial rule to independence serving as the country’s first Prime Minister.
Kiwanuka was imprisoned in 1969 by Milton Obote’s government, but was one of 55 political detainees released by Idi Amin immediately after the coup that brought Amin to power. Amin appointed him as Chief Justice of Uganda on 27th June 1971.
Kiwanuka soon came into confrontation with Amin’s disregard for the rule of law. On September 21st 1972, Chief Justice Kiwanuka was picked by three men in civilian clothes who said they were security officers. He was presiding over a session of the High Court when he was dragged away by the men.
The men bundled Kiwanuka into a light blue Peugeot 504 registration number UUU 171 and drove away never to be seen again.
Investigations later revealed that the light blue Peugeot was registered in the names of Uganda Armed Forces. During Kiwanuka’s murder inquest, it was revealed that Peugeot 504 was fitted with a different registration USH 351, while UUU 171 was transferred to a Volkswagen 1200 saloon grey in color.
Kiwanuka was brutally killed by Amin’s forces on 22nd September at Makindye Military Prison in a prolonged execution.
Eye witnesses said Kiwanuka’s ears, nose, lips and arms were severed, he was also cut open and his internal organs removed, and was also castrated before his body was set on fire.
Kiwanuka’s death was not acknowledged as an execution, with Amin instead publicly blaming it on Obote’s supporters and even launching a police investigation.
Fast forward to 2021, President Yoweri Museveni led Ugandans in celebrating Chief Justice Kiwanuka memorial day on Friday September 24th.
Uganda’s Judiciary organized the first-ever memorial day for former Chief Justice Kiwanuka in 2018, as of 2021 the celebration marked its 4th anniversary.
Days after the celebration, Idi Amin’s son Hussein Lumumba Amin came out to claim that it’s Museveni who killed Kiwanuka and not his father.
Hussein Amin also stated that Museveni should have marked the 4th anniversary of Kiwanuka memorial day by apologizing for his killing instead.
To make his point further clearer, Hussein Amin was seen carrying the number plate with registration number UUU 171, which was fitted to the car that was used to kidnap Kiwanuka from the High Court on the day he disappeared.
Hussein Amin claimed that Museveni was seen driving the same car with registration number UUU 171 three months after Kiwanuka’s abduction. However, it’s not clear how Hussein Amin got hold of the number plate.
Below is the statement Hussein Amin issued on Kiwanuka’s death:
PUBLIC STATEMENT: BEN KIWANUKA MEMORIAL 2021
On behalf of the bereaved families, allow me to hereby state that in attending Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka’s memorial ceremony yesterday, the right thing would have been for Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to apologize to the family and ask them for forgiveness.
Just three months after the abduction of Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka, Mr. Yoweri Museveni was found driving the very Volkswagen vehicle whose number plate eye witnesses had noted, seen on the abduction vehicle.
Once cornered by police on January 22nd 1973 at House 49, Maluku Housing Estate in Mbale and asked about the vehicle, Museveni and the three other Ben Kiwanuka abductors drew their weapons and started shooting senselessly at the arresting officers and also at the public. Museveni then fled arrest into a nearby forest, and has been a fugitive from Ugandan law in the Ben Kiwanuka disappearance ever since.
The last time that anyone saw Mr. Ben Kiwanuka alive was during his abduction on 22nd September 1972 from the High Court chambers, and the official Amin government investigation never closed this case. In fact the 1974 Commission of Inquiry established by the government of Uganda clearly states on the Ben Kiwanuka abduction case that “His whereabouts are still unknown”.
Yet for the last 49 years, Milton Obote and Museveni both say he is dead. How come they know that he is already dead when the government of Uganda was still searching for him, and therefore where is his body which they must have seen dead because that is the only way humanly possible to already know that he is dead?
Secondly, not only has Museveni profusely confessed to being involved in terrorist acts against the people of Uganda at the time, he was actually also found red-handed with the others who were then shot dead in self defence by the arresting officers during that infamous shootout at House 49 where evidence collected thereafter showed that they had actually been interrupted while plotting their next abduction.
Documents gathered from the scene, including a list of target individuals, evidence that one of Museveni’s surviving co-terrorists has recently confessed in the Ugandan media to having been sent to bring them to him, those hugely incriminating documents showed that the string of heinous serial abductions of at least nine other prominent Ugandans in the four months following Ben Kiwanuka’s mysterious disappearance, were all ordered by the late Chief Justices known political enemy, Museveni’s then boss and political hero, dictator Apollo Milton O’boat’e.
However since Museveni hasn’t yet apologized to the victims family 49 years on, and has the guts to annually attend the memorials of his own victims whom he possibly senselessly butchered, then I kindly request him to have the human decency to at least explain to the poor family and to the people of Uganda how he came into possession of the very Volkswagen vehicle whose number plate several eye witnesses had reported seeing in the abhorrent broad daylight abduction of the late Ben Kiwanuka, the very vehicle registration number UUU 171.
Signed: Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin
