A Ugandan journalist suspected of involvement in rebel activity has been charged with treason and remanded in custody, his lawyer told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.
Patrick Otim, a reporter with Mega FM based in Gulu, in northern Uganda, has been accused by the military of plotting to launch an armed rebellion against the government.
His lawyer, Ladislaus Rwakafuzi, said Otim appeared in a Kampala court on Tuesday but was remanded in prison before he could enter a plea on the treason charge.
”We have not had a chance to review the evidence,” Rwakufuzi told AFP. ”We think he is just being witch-hunted for his political journalism.”
Otim was arrested on May 13 and held without access to family or legal counsel for more than a month, according to the Uganda Journalists Union.
In court on Tuesday he was charged alongside 10 other individuals, all accused of plotting a rebellion and operating a rebel training camp in Murchison Falls National Park.
Northern Uganda has long been the site of rebel activity, most notably by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, which clashed with government forces in the north for nearly two decades before withdrawing to the Democratic Republic of Congo. — AFP
