The Mityana Municipality Member of Parliament, Francis Butebi Zaake says he can clearly remember and identify security operatives who attacked and tortured him during campaigns on August 13th ahead of the Arua Municipality by election.
Zaake shares that besides the faces, he can also vividly remember some of the name tags of the officers. He claims that they donned Special Forces Command – SFC uniform and where communicating in Runyankole and Swahil.
The legislator who recently returned from India where he had gone for specialized treatment made the remarks on Monday while addressing a press conference at his home in Nalumunye in Wakiso District where he shared his ordeal on what happened to him in Arua.
Although most of the victims of the Arua fracas have shared their story, little or nothing about Zaake’s experience had been shared. The legislator went missing and later showed up unconscious at Lubaga Hospital with injuries on his fingers, ears and other parts of the body.
Zaake had been hospitalised at Lubaga Hospital since August 15th 2018 two days after he was arrested from Arua District together with 33 others who included Members of Parliament and supporters of Arua Municipality MP, Kasiano Wadri. All of them apart from him, have since appeared before Gulu Chief Magistrate Francis Dawa Matenga. It is alleged that they commanded a team of youths that obstructed the president’s motorcade and pelted stones that smashed the windscreen of one of the vehicles in the convoy.
However, Zaake has at last all shared his ordeal saying that on a day before the incident, he was in Mityana meeting the Local Council Chairpersons. Being that his drivers were not around, he called Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine to send him a driver and that’s how Yasin Kawuuma, one of Kyagulanyi’s driver who was later gunned ended up in Arua.
Zaake, who claims that after the rally they never met with the president’s convoy. He says that after the rally he personally went back to the hotel were they had booked. He narrates that shortly after his arrival, he had voices that drew nearer and stronger yelling that Kawuuma had been gunned down which prompted him to leave the room to witness what had happened.
He adds that before he came closer to the scene, a multitude of gun wielding security operatives swarmed in causing his retreat from the place.
