Ex-spy, Red Pepper editors arrested over Aine photo

Red Pepper Managing Editor Ben Byarabaha (R) and Kamunye Editor Dickson Mubiru leave the police Special Investigations Division in Kireka, Wakiso District after getting Police Bond on Friday evening. Photo by Joseph Kiggundu.

Kampala. Police have arrested Red Pepper editors and a former intelligence operative with Internal Security Organisation on charges of circulating a photograph with features of a dead man resembling the missing Christopher Aine, the head of presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi’s security team.
Mr Charles Rwomushana, a former chief of political intelligence desk at State House, was arrested on Friday night.
Deputy police spokesperson Polly Namaye confirmed Mr Rwomushana’s arrest.


“We want to know the source of the photograph that he widely circulated on his social media platforms. There are also other statements he has been posting on the same platforms that we need some answers,” Ms Namaye said.
Police say Mr Aine is wanted over several cases, including the fighting between supporters of NRM presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni and Mr Mbabazi at a rally in Ntungamo District last month.
Mr Aine has been missing for weeks, sparking a wave of accusations from the Mbabazi camp against the police for holding him secretly in an unknown detention.


The police have denied having Mr Aine in custody and instead placed a bounty of Shs20m for whoever reveals information about his whereabouts.


This week, social media activists posted photographs of a dead man they claimed to be Mr Aine, but police dismissed the picture as a concoction. They insisted Mr Aine was still alive and in hiding.

Red Pepper staff held
The photographs also led to the arrest of three Red Pepper Publications staff, including Mr Ben Byarabaha, the newspaper’s managing editor, Mr Dickson Mubiru, the chief editor of Kamunye, a sister newspaper, and the paper’s human resource manager, Mr Shebaah Amanya, on Thursday.
They recorded statement before they were released at the Special Investigations Division in Kireka, Wakiso District, on Friday evening.


Mr Mubiru was charged with criminal defamation of a police officer in a separate story published in Kamunye, a vernacular newspaper.


Police alleged that Mr Mubiru defamed Assistant Superintendent of Police Nickson Agasirwe Karuhanga when the publication claimed that his wife, who died recently, was poisoned.
ASP Agasirwe, a confidant of the Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura, is the head of the Special Operations Command based at Nalufenya, Jinja District.


ASP Agasirwe’s wife died in a clinic where she had gone for a malaria treatment at Kyaliwajjala, Wakiso District.
“Kamunye continued to claim that Mr Agasirwe’s wife had died of poisoning yet they had a post-mortem report that revealed that she died of natural causes. In the process, they defamed the officer,” Ms Namaye said.

THE CASE
The family of the head of security of Independent presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi, on Thursday said the picture making rounds on social media of a dead body bears similar characteristics to those of Mr Christopher Aine. Ms Ritah Babirye Aine, a twin sister to Aine on Thursday said her brother has a scar above the eye, which he got in an accident and a gap between the teeth; features visible on the pictures of the dead body published in local media and being shared on social media.