Salim Saleh smuggles $300,000 worth of narcotics from Pakistan

Reports from Interpol just received by Radio Katwe say that General Salim Saleh, the stepbrother of President Yoweri Museveni, has been smuggling drugs from south East Asia and into Uganda.

The report issued early this month says General Saleh has been smuggling the narcotics using his aide Captain Juma Seiko as the coordinator.

The narcotics drugs usually come through Entebbe International Airport where Saleh's VIP status enables him to go unchecked.

The recent drug consignment has a street value reported at 300,000 dollars (about 720 million Uganda shillings.)

The Interpol report says international detectives from Pakistan and Kenya have been watching Seiko coordinating the smuggling of the drugs and passing Ugandan police.

The reports say that the real smuggler in this case is not even Seiko, but his boss General Saleh, the stepbrother of President Yoweri Museveni.

The information is now being passed on to the United States embassy in Kampala as part of America's struggle to stamp out the supply routes of cocaine and heroin in to the United States. The Pakistani High Commission in Kampala is also being informed, with Pakistani police now on the alert for Seiko.

Many prominent Ugandans, among them the property owner Sudhir Ruparelia and others, are believed to make the largest part of their money from drug dealing.

This report leaked to Radio Katwe is the first hard evidence that links General Saleh to the racket.

The U.S. embassy is taking a keen interest in the story.

Juma Saleh has been a notorious member of President Museveni's mafia for over 25 years.

He was a guerrilla in Museveni's FRONASA and was one of those who murdered some prominent Ugandans as part of Museveni's campaign to make it look as if it was Idi Amin doing it.

After the 1979 war, Seiko joined the ranks of the UNLA as one of the FRONASA men. He was stationed at the Military Police barracks in Makindye and from there he used to terrorise the local population along with Lieutenant Pecos Onesimus Kutesa at a roadblock in Konge in the same area.

This terror campaign was undertaken to make Ugandans blame the insecurity and the thuggery on the UNLA and so make them hate northerners and after 1980, hate Obote.

When the NRA war started, Seiko joined Museveni and Saleh in the bush. In 1986, he came to Kampala and was Saleh's aide de camp.

In 1986, Seiko either raped or tried to rape Rachel Masika, a daughter of the former attorney general George Masika. Rachel Masika was then a first-year student at Makerere University.

He was arrested but within a short time of his arrest, Salim Saleh came and arranged for him to be released.

Today he is a rich Kampala figure and people assumed that he is a businessman.

The U.S. anti-narcotics agency is reportedly going to keep Captain Seiko's every move under close scrutiny including his trips abroad. International police agencies have been alerted to keep a look out for Seiko.

But the sources would not disclose any further details