Bobi Wine and his international lawyers playing diversionary tactics, government says

Government says lawyers of Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi popularly known as Bobi Wine are employing diversionary tactics in “raising the tantalizing, although unproven, allegations of torture in order to get him off the hook.”

Government spokesperson Mr Ofwono Opondo says if Bobi Wine was tortured or injected with unknown substances, as is being claimed, he should quickly return to Uganda to raise those issues before court, where the trial will be and they shall transparently be investigated and culprits punished.

“Otherwise, they are nonsensical because Bobi Wine isn’t the only suspect in this case, and the Uganda state doesn’t use assassination against its opponents or even enemies. Uganda is a law-abiding country,” wrote Mr Opondo in a press statement.

According to him, the Uganda Medical Board constituted a team of specialists who subjected Bobi Wine to a highly professional, credible and transparent medical examination in the presence of his Ugandan lawyers last week before he left Uganda, and no condition was found warranting further medical referral either here or abroad.

“I don’t think Mr [Robert] Amsterdam (one of Bobi Wine’s international lawyers), is any more competent in analyzing a medical condition of a person. We strongly reject Mr. Amsterdam’s reference of the Uganda government as a ‘criminal enterprise’ because Uganda is governed in accordance with our own democratic Constitution, laws and rules, as well as respect to recognised international standards,” Mr Opondo further states.

Mr Ofwono’s statement was in response to Mr Amsterdam’s recent remarks in which he accused government security agencies of torturing his client.

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Bobi Wine’s official legal media website last month reported that, “Robert Amsterdam has called for greater international pressure to protect human rights in Uganda, and specifically to single out the officials responsible for alleged abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act legislation.”
He said Mr Kyagulanyi’s arrest not only is a politically motivated act of repression, “but furthethermore he has since been subjected to inhuman and horrific acts of torture by the Ugandan security services from which it is possible he may never recover.”

“This outrageous and reprehensible act of state aggression- an episode not seen since the days of Idi Amin- requires a robust and broad response from the international community to secure his safety and to bring his torturers to account,” the lawyer is quoted as having said last month while Bobi Wine was still in detention.