Nadduli family questioned over Busiika police attack

Ten members of former minister Abdul Nadduli’s family taken into military custody on Tuesday, were interrogated over allegations of illegal possession of guns and links to the October 31 deadly attack on Busiika Police Station in Luweero District.

Two of them, Mr Yusuf Jakana, Hajj Nadduli’s younger brother, and Mr Sulaiman Nadduli, an Imam at Masjid Fatuma, in separate interviews told the Monitor that interrogators initially tasked them to produce the killer weapon.

Unknown gunmen raided Busiika Police Station last month and killed Moses Wagaluka, the officer in-charge of criminal investigations, and police constable Alex Ongolo.

The third officer Stephen O’dama who was shot seven times succumbed to wounds on Tuesday after a week in intensive care unit (ICU) at Mulago National Referral Hospital.

Following the onslaught, security officers wearing civilian clothes stormed Kalege Village in Semuto Sub-county, Nakaseke District in the wee hours of Tuesday night and arrested 10 members of the family of Hajj Nadduli, a veteran of the five-year guerrilla war that brought President Museveni to power in 1986.

Initial speculation on their whereabouts ended when Hajj Nadduli revealed that the deputy Chief of Military Intelligence (D/CMI), Brig Abdul Rugumayo, had informed him that the suspects were in their custody.

According to him, the military spymaster said they had established that the accused were not in possession of illegal guns as alleged, prompting the army to release them without charge.

But questions about how they got picked as suspects in the first place lingered.

Mr Jakana, who is a resident of Kalege Village, Semuto Sub-county, said armed men arrested each of them from their homes and they were taken to the headquarters of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in a Kampala suburb.

He said he was spanked when he questioned the basis for his arrest, although none of them – all questioned about an illegal gun supposedly used in the attack on Busiika Police Station – were tortured while in custody.

According to Mr Jakana, interrogators informed them that one of the family members, Mr Jamada Mugga, held earlier on undisclosed charges, “had given them wrong information possibly out of fear and pain [endured while in custody]”  that they had a gun and participated in the raid on the police station.

After hours of interrogation, he said, the military spies decided that Mugga’s information was unreliable and without evidence of medical examination, declared him “mentally ill”.

They released the suspects, advising them to book their alleged accuser to a psychiatric facility.

“The security [operatives] noticed that we were innocent,” Mr Jakana said yesterday.

This was corroborated by Mr Sulaiman, who had also been jointly detained at CMI headquarters.

Imam Sulaiman said he never imagined that he posed a security risk.

“It is true that we had got information about the arrest of Jamada Mugga, but my life ... [wasn’t at] risk. I only learnt from the security operatives that they were looking for a gun when they knocked on my door. I surrendered myself after some small resistance that attracted some beatings,” he said.

Asked about the accounts last evening, CMI’s Rugumayo declined to discuss the matter, referring our inquiries to the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) spokesman, Brig Felix Kulayigye, who was unavailable by press time.

The arrest by state security operatives of members of the family of Nadduli is not new.

His 37-year-old Suleiman Jakana Nadduli died in October, about a month after he limped out of military custody where he was allegedly tortured, adding to injuries he sustained in a February accident.

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