Mufti Mubajje asks govt to compensate tortured Muslims

KAMPALA.

The Mufti of Uganda, Ramadhan Mubajje yesterday used his Idd-el-Fitr sermon to ask government to compensate all Muslims who were wrongfully arrested, detained and tortured over alleged involvement in the spates of murder.
While leading Idd-el-Fitr prayers at the National Mosque in Old Kampala, Mufti Mubajje said several Muslims arrested over different murder charges have been found innocent by courts of law after undergoing a lot of torture in in detention facilities.
“Government should compensate all Muslims who were arrested and tortured over criminality but were released by the courts. We also ask government to stop always seeing Muslims as the first suspects in every crime that is committed. Muslims are peaceful people,” Mufti Mubajje said.
At least 19 Muslims, who were arrested by police over the gruesome murder of former police spokesperson, Andrew Felix Kaweesi, on March 17, 2017 were released by court early this year after the State failed to avail satisfactory evidence to sustain their charges.
Court awarded some of the suspects with more than Shs200m compensation for the torture afflicted on them when they were being held at the now closed high profile detention facility at Nalufenya, in Jinja District.
Similarly, several suspects in the back-to-back killings of Muslim clerics were released by court late last year and all allege they were tortured by police.
Citing an example of Arua Municipality MP, Col Ibrahim Abiriga, who was murdered a week ago, Mufti Mubajje urged government to conduct a comprehensive investigation to establish why Muslims have always been the most targeted by assassins.
“Muslims are the most killed in this criminality and they are always the first ones arrested as suspects. It is time government investigated why we are the ones being killed and first ones arrested by security agencies,” Mufti Mubajje said.
Apart from Kaweesi who was a Catholic, more than a dozen Muslim clerics have been assassinated in the last five years. In every murder, at least a dozen of Muslims get arrested but most of them are later released by courts.