OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Wednesday 8.30pm.
A FORMER Ugandan cabinet minister and nine others have appeared in court in Kampala charged with treason.
Assistant Police Superintendent Charles Dickens Ojakol, leading the prosecution, said that the 10 accused, and others still at large, plotted in Kampala and the Buganda region of central Uganda to overthrow the government by force of arms. One of those charged is former cabinet minister Everisto Nyanzi; the others include a 71-year-old man and two retired army lieutenants.
The government claims that Nyanzi, who first served as a minister in the short-lived government of General Tito Okello and then in the first cabinet line-up of President Yoweri Museveni, is chairman of the rebel Federal Democratic Alliance. Minister of State for Security Muruli Mukasa said last week that Nyanzi was arrested in Kampala on September 13 along with “four members of his rebel high command”. Nyanzi, he added, was planning “massive acts of violence” against the Ugandan government. Nyanzi, a prominent member of the opposition Democratic Party, has reportedly been living in exile in Kenya since Museveni’s election victory in 1996. However security officials say he has since been sneaking into Uganda for clandestine meetings.
Nyanzi, who was arrested and accused of planning a coup against the government in 1987 but was later acquitted, was arrested on September 13, but not produced before a court until Wednesday. Under Ugandan law a suspect must be produced in court within 48 hours of arrest, or released.
Meanwhile the Ugandan government has cancelled a controversial deal with former Soviet republics under which they were to supply military helicopters to Kampala, the defence ministry in Kampala said on Wednesday.
Defence minister Stephen Kavuma said the government terminated the $12-million deal for the supply of four second-hand helicopters because it learned that the aircraft had not been overhauled and were not airworthy, as agreed in the contract.