Ugandan lawmaker says he was tortured

President pressured to arrest alleged attackers

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandan soldiers beat up pop star-turned-lawmaker Bobi Wine and squeezed his genitals until he passed out, he charged on Monday, three days after he departed for the United States for medical care.

Soldiers “violated me as if they were beasts,” said Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, in his first public statement since his arrest on Aug. 14 for his alleged role in an incident in which the president’s motorcade was pelted with stones.

“They wrapped me in a thick piece of cloth and bundled me into a vehicle,” he said. “Those guys did to me unspeakable things in that vehicle. They pulled my manhood and squeezed my testicles while punching me with objects I didn’t see.”

He said a doctor told him that one of his kidneys had been damaged.

Ssentamu’s driver was killed in the violence the followed the alleged attack on the president’s convoy, reportedly by government forces. Ssentamu said he believes he survived an assassination attempt.

The allegations of torture will increase pressure on the government to arrest Wine’s alleged abusers. Rights groups and the speaker of Uganda’s parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, have urged President Yoweri Museveni to arrest the suspects and present them in court.

Museveni, who has accused Ssentamu and other opposition politicians of luring young people into rioting, recently told lawmakers with the ruling party that Ssentamu and his co-accused had resisted arrest and even assaulted some officers, forcing security personnel to use force, according to multiple accounts in the local media.

The military has denied the allegations of torture.

According to Ssentamu, after he regained consciousness, two soldiers who came to see him “were visibly pleased to see that I was still alive. They came close to me. One of them apologized in tears about what had happened.”

His feet and hands had been tied together and he bled from the nose and ears, he said.

Ssentamu and over 30 others, including four other lawmakers, have been charged with treason over their roles in the alleged attack on the president’s convoy, heightening concerns about a crackdown on the opposition in this East African nation.

One of those lawmakers, Francis Zaake, has also been hospitalized with serious injuries allegedly suffered at the hands of security forces during detention.

In Uganda, the maximum penalty for treason is death.

Their lawyers say the treason charge is false.

Ssentamu has emerged as a powerful opposition voice among youths frustrated by Museveni. The singer won a parliament seat last year without the backing of a political party.

His supporters, citing his success in helping opposition candidates to win elections across the country, are urging him to run for president in 2021.