Besigye wins rape case against NRM regime

Colonel Kizza Besigye, the president of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party was on Tuesday March 7, 2006 acquitted of the charge of rape brought by the Ugandan state against him.

The ruling was made by Justice John Bosco Katutsi, the High Court judge who handled several of Besigye's cases in late 2005 until this ruling.

In reading his ruling, Katutsi said the prosecution, which here was the state, had failed to provide enough compelling evidence to back up the claim that Besigye raped Joanita Kyakuwa in November 1997.

Speaking to reporters after 10:00 am. outside the High Court building in Kampala in a mixture of English, Luganda, and Kiswahili, Besigye welcomed the verdict.

But went on to criticize the head of the military court martial, General Elly Tumwine, for trying to continue hearing the other charges, treason, at the court martial in Makindye, outside Kampala city.

Besigye insisted that the constitutional court had clearly ruled that only the High Court had the constitutional right to hear treason charges.

The victory by Besigye is only the latest in a string of losses by the state in the courts of law since Besigye was arrested on November 14, 2005. Justice Katutsi has been central to the Besigye charges in more ways than one.

In late December 2005, the state was desperate to see to it that Besigye remained remanded at Luzira upper prison throughout the presidential campaigns. State House, using the Chief of Military Intelligence Colonel Leopold Kyanda, arranged to bribe some of the key judges involved in the case.

Colonel Kyanda handed 200 million Uganda shillings (about 104,000 U.S. dollars) to one of his operatives, Captain Ddamulira, to deliver in two instalments to Justice Remmy Kasule, as a bribe to declare that he could not handle the case and so forward it.

This was to be a delaying tactic.

When it was made public on December 31, 2005 by Besigye's wife, Winnie Byanyima and the FDC Treasurer Jack Sabiiti, the government moved to the next step.

They knew Justice Katutsi would handle the matter of releasing Besigye from jail.

Once again, Military Intelligence got involved. In the days after Christmas, operatives from Military Intelligence kept calling up Justice Katutsi but he ignored their calls.

When they persisted, he took to switching off his phone and then changed his phone number.

Finally, the operatives were sent in person to his home with 400 million shillings (about 208,000 dollars) in cash, in an effort to bribe him.

An angry Katutsi told them off, saying that he did not take bribes and did his job with a clear conscience.

The Military Intelligence agents apologised and left his home. Katutsi then told his family of what had been going on. That was New Year's Day 2006. He wrote out his ruling and made a number of copies of it.

He then told his family that if anything were to happen to him, they should know the background to the case.

On Monday January 2, 2006, Katutsi appeared before the High Court and ruled that it was illegal to keep Besigye under detention, a ruling that set off large and enthusiastic celebrations across the country.

With all these rulings, why is General Tumwine, the head of the military court martial, insisting on trying Besigye illegally?

There are three factors to consider.

The first is that which Radio Katwe has been insisting on, which is that President Yoweri Museveni has had a long standing mental illness called manic depression or bipolar disorder, which first manifested itself around 1966 or 1967.

He has been behaving much like the Roman emperor Caligula, becoming unpredictable, given to strange mood swings and that has played out in public life.

In one week, Museveni can say one thing in a matter of serious national policy, only to reverse himself without explaining why in the first place he took his initial position.

He has been throwing temper tantrums at State House and his aides and generals are terrified of him.

Most of them do not even know Museveni's history of mental illness. Many army and intelligence officers are only starting to learn about it by secretly visiting the Radio Katwe website.

So in fearing to be purged or arrested, senior army officers have been trying to outdo themselves in showing unwavering loyalty to him.

This could throw some light on the presidential advisor on intelligence General David Tinyefuzas' sudden , almost uncouth belligerence in the media in February.

That also is why Tumwine has tended to take what appears like a hard line in the Besigye case.

The second factor is more personal and a clue came from Besigye himself. When he was still in exile in South Africa in 2004, Dr. Besigye in one of his articles published by the "Sunday Monitor" newspaper hinted that Tumwine was not himself.

Besigye, who was a medical doctor treating NRA guerrilla leaders between 1982 and 1986, wrote in the "Sunday Monitor" that when Tumwine was shot and lost his eye in 1981, it badly affected him and he had a nervous breakdown.

According to Besigye, Tumwine's traumatic experience has continued to affect him ever since. That is why when Besigye has appeared before Tumwine at the court martial in Makindye, he has remained passive, knowing as a doctor that he is being tried by a man who is captive to forces that a normal judge is not.

The third factor that explains why Tumwine seems overzealous in prosecuting Besigye, comes from the fact that during the NRA guerrilla days in the bush, Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima was a girlfriend of Tumwine's.

In fact, knowledgeable sources say that before the NRA took power in 1986, the condition for Museveni to appoint Tumwine as the first commander of the NRA national army, was if he could surrender Byanyima to him, Museveni.

That is some of the horse trading that led to Tumwine being named army commander.

So it maybe a stretch but could it be that the good General still harbours some bitterness when he sees Byanyima now married to Besigye and is taking that bitterness out on Besigye?