KAMPALA.Two Kenyan human rights activists who were reportedly abducted in Uganda recently by the country’s security operatives have petitioned the court seeking their release.
The duo including Mr Nicholas Oyoo and Mr Bob Njagi were shortly after attending a political campaign rally of the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) party presidential candidate, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine .
Through their lawyers, have petitioned the Civil Division of the High Court in Kampala through the law firm of Kiiza & Mugisha Co. Advocates are Oyoo and Njagi, after being held incommunicado for days.
They have listed Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, the Chief of Defence Intelligence and Security, the Inspector General of Police, and the Attorney General as the respondents following their disappearance last week.
Mr Koffi Atinda, a colleague of Mr Njagi, in his affidavit to support the court action against the state security agencies listed above, having witnessed the abduction since he was with the duo, avers that the security agents abducted his colleagues after Mr Kyagulanyi’s rally in the Eastern District of Kaliro, and that they are currently being held at the Defense Intelligence and Security (DIS), former Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) headquarters in Mbuya, Kampala.
“The respondent’s military arrest and detention of the applicants at the 2nd respondent’s detention facility since Wednesday, October 1, 2025, in Mbuya is incommunicado detention, illegal and unlawful,” Mr Koffi asserts in his affidavit.
Adding: “The applicants have since been in an illegal and incommunicado detention for more than 48 hours, and they are incommunicado without trial or any charges preferred against them.”
Mr Koffi explains that his colleagues, who are Kenyan nationals and members of the African Movement, had travelled to Uganda to show their support for their “personal friend, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi” who is seeking to dislodge President Museveni, 81, who has been in power for four decades.
“It’s during their stay and visit in Uganda that they were brutally arrested by men wielding guns in both military and civilian clothes around Kaliro District at Starbex Petrol Station in Eastern Uganda, where they had parked their vehicle,” Mr Koffi recollects.
“I witnessed the arrest and survived the arrest by a whisker. They were taken in a Toyota Hiace Van commonly known as Drone and whisked away at a terrible speed to a place one of them told me was Mbuya,” he adds.
Further, he states that there is a palpable concern among the friends and family of the abducted duo that they could be subjected to torture and inhumane treatment at the hands of the military, which is notorious for torturing, harassing, and persecuting the critics of President Museveni and his inner circle.
“It’s important that this honourable court brings to an end the illegal military detention of the applicants and orders their unconditional liberty,” he prays to the court.
By press time, it was not clear when the High Court would convene and hear the habeas corpus application, although the Constitution demands that matters of human rights should be fast-tracked.
Human rights activists and some religious leaders are concerned about the rampant abduction and torture of members of the opposition as the country prepares to hold elections in 2026.
The petition comes a day after the former Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Kampala, Rt Rev. Dr. Hannington Mutebi, condemned what he described as the rampant abductions of opposition members by security forces.
While officiating at the confirmation of 47 young faithful at St. John’s Church, Makerere on October 5, Dr Mutebi said that the ruling government should instead be the champion of the rule of law, rather than abducting its citizens and other people with dissenting views and throwing them into safe houses and prisons.
“…the torture of people who are not part of the ruling class, where we see people being tortured, put in safe houses, and some in prison, not brought to the courts of law, we want a country where everybody’s rights are respected,” he said.
Eight presidential candidates who were nominated last month are currently traversing the country seeking the mandate to lead Ugandans for the next five years. This is the second week of hunting for votes countrywide.
The other candidates, Mr Nathan Nandala Mafabi of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Maj. Gen (rtd) Gregory Mugisha Muntu of the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT), and Mubarak Munyagwa of the Common Man’s Party.
Others are: Frank Bulira Kabinga of the Revolutionary People’s Party (RPP), Yoweri Museveni of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), Elton John Mabirizi of the Conservative Party, and Robert Kasibante of the National Peasants Party.