Exclusive: Opposition Leader Col.Besigye Formally Drags President Museveni To ICC, Fails To Get Targeted 2 Million Signatures

By Andrew Irumba

A few months ago, President Museveni’s former personal physician now turned main tormentor and nemesis Rtd.Col.Dr.Kiiza Besigye Kifefe, and other opposition key figures like the city Lord  mayor Erias Lukwago launched an international campaign, in which they appealed to all Ugandans wherever they are to sign a petition that they would use to seek the attention of the International criminal court (ICC)’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, to indict Uganda’s longest serving president Rtd.Gen.Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, son of late Mzeei Amos Kaguta and Esiteeri Kokundeka.

Now, after several months of working day and night clandestinely like red Ants, Spy Uganda can authoritative confirm that a legal team from Rtd.Col.Besigye’s ‘People’s Government’, Headquartered along Katonga road, on Monday successfully delivered the petition to the office of the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and had a lengthy discussion with her legal team in her office on the mechanics thereafter in ensuring the process kick starts as soon as possible.

Although the entire legal process back home is being headed by the man who inhales and exhales rule of law, the City lord Mayor Erias Lukwago,who is also Besigye’s Deputy president, the team that traveled to the Hague, Netherlands is being led by Counsel Fred Eddie Mukasa Lugalambi of Mukasa Lugalambi & Co.Advocates.

Our sources indicate that this team of lawyers, having been gathering information about crimes against humanity and the climax being the killing and shooting of several people in Kasese in the Rwenzuru palace, they finally traveled to the Hague over the weekend to deliver evidence and follow up the petition which was filed electronically several days ago before leaving.

“As I speak to you now, we’ve already met with top officials at the Hague and submitted a backup petition with hundreds of thousands of Ugandans’ signatures, well verified and crosschecked, petitioning the ICC to call president Museveni and his men, mostly soldiers suspected to have been involved in the gross violation of Human Rights at unprecedented levels in Uganda and within the region,” counsel Lugalambi who is still in Netherlands with his team told this reporter.

However, when pressed alittle more harder on whether they achieved the minimum 2 million signatures which they targeted at the start of the exercise, Lugalambi contended that even with one million plus signatures, they believed they had enough to seek Bensouda’s attention.

“We so far have more than 1million, but many are still signing…and there is room for those additional signatures to the petition, remember we’re submitting electronically.

And by the way, there is no specified number required, even one person or Organization can petition ICC. The question of numbers is to show strength,” he clarified.

Mukasa contended that they have enough evidence to have a primafacie case standing against the head of state and many of his top men.

Should this petition succeed, president Museveni will join other African presidents that have been indicted by the ICC before. They include Uhuru Kenyata (Kenya), William Ruto(Uhuru’s Deputy President), Omar Al-Bashir (former Sudan President), Robert Mugabe (former president Zimbabwe), Muammar Gaddafi (former president of Libya), Laurent Gbagbo (former president of Cote d’Ivoire) among others.

The petitioner alledges that, as a means of holding onto the illegitimately and illegally assumed power, Rtd.General Yoweri Museveni and his accomplices have continuously unleashed violence and terror against the citizens of Uganda to keep them muzzled and subdued.

Additionally, Gen. Museveni’s regime has, at the altar of consolidation of a personal rule, committed gross human rights violations and atrocities, including but not limited to torture, suppression, repression, incarcerations and elimination or killing of people opposed, or perceived to be opposed to the sitting regime.

According to Besigye and team,this has been systematically done countrywide and state-orchestrated massacres have been carried out in various parts of the country and the most recent one being the infamous Kasese massacre that took place in the aftermath of the 2016 General elections, when security forces under the command of Gen. Museveni and his Accomplices raided the palace of Omusinga Charles Wesley Mumbere, a cultural leader of the Rwenzururu people, in Kasese District and reportedly massacred hundreds of people in the most savage manner one can imagine of.To date, no report and/or accountability has ever been given by the regime or any other local or International organization or agency.

According to the petitioner, whose copy our spy chanced on, similar massacres have been carried out with impunity in Acholi Sub Region, Teso, Lango, West Nile, the killing of many people by security personnel during the 2009 Buganda Central Government stand-off over Bugerere county and 2011 walk-to-work (W2W) civil protests and none of the masterminds and perpetrators of the same has been brought to book, further states the petition.

Who Is Lawyer Mukasa Lugalambi That Led The Team To The Hague?

Lawyer Mukasa Lugalambi has over 20 years in Human Rights and Civil Litigation law.

He was a lecturer of law at several Universities including Mukono University, Kampala International University and Law Development Centre (LDC).

He is the ‘notorious’ lawyer who took Parliament to court accusing MPs of abusing public funds by paying themselves excessive emoluments, benefits and salaries.

He won this case and MPs’ appetite for money henceforth curtailed. He is also known for engaging in several land cases intended to stop government officials from evicting the poor from their pieces of land through dubious acts. He does this mostly on pro-bono terms.

But Briefly, Who Is Gen.Yoweri Museveni Now Being Threatened With ICC Indictment?

Rtd.Gen.Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is a Ugandan politician who has been President of the Republic of Uganda since 1986. (www.hotelogix.com)

Museveni was involved in rebellions that toppled notorious Ugandan leaders Idi Amin (1971–79) and Milton Obote (1980–85) before capturing power in 1986.In the mid- to late 1990s, Museveni was celebrated by the West as part of a new progressive generation of good African leaders that were pro-people. 

Indeed, during Museveni’s presidency, Uganda has experienced relative peace and significant success in battling HIV/AIDS. But at the same time, Uganda remains a country suffering from high levels of corruption, unemployment (morethan 80% youth unemployed) and poverty.

Museveni’s presidency has been marred by involvement in civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other Great Lakes region conflicts; the rebellion in Northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army which caused a humanitarian emergency; and the suppression of political opposition and constitutional amendments scrapping presidential term limits (2005) and the presidential age limit (2017), thus enabling the extension of his rule.

Museveni was born on 15 September 1944 in Rukungiri and his family migrated to Ntungamo, to parents Mzee Amos Kaguta (1916–2013), a cattle herder, and Esteeri Kokundeka Nganzi (1918–2001), a housewife, both illiterate. He is of the Basiita clan and Bahororo by tribe.

Museveni gets his middle name from his father, Mzee Amos Kaguta. Kaguta is also the father of Museveni’s young brother Caleb Akandwanaho, popularly known as Salim Saleh, and sister Violet Kajubiri.

Museveni attended Kyamate Elementary School, Mbarara High School, and Ntare School. In 1967, he went to the University of Dar-es Salaam in Tanzania. There, he studied economics and political science and became a Marxist, involving himself in radical Pan-African Poli-t[r]ic[k]s. 

While at the University, Museveni formed the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front Activist group and led a student delegation to FRELIMO territory in Portuguese Mozambique, where he received guerrilla training. Studying under the leftist Walter Rodney, among others, Museveni wrote a university thesis on the applicability of Frantz Fanon’s ideas on revolutionary violence to post-colonial Africa.

It remains a dream whether the opposition can surely make a landmark on this long journey visibly between a rock and hard surface. TheSpy Uganda will keep you posted on all the developments on this….Watch the space… 

Full List Of People Indicted By The International Criminal Court (ICC)