{"id":25358,"date":"2016-05-15T04:41:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T04:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/uganda-tension-as-court-charges-dr-besigye-with\/"},"modified":"2016-05-15T04:41:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T04:41:24","slug":"uganda-tension-as-court-charges-dr-besigye-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/uganda-tension-as-court-charges-dr-besigye-with\/","title":{"rendered":"Uganda:Tension as court charges Dr Besigye with treason"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Shops in Moroto Town in Karamoja sub-region closed and business came to a standstill on Friday evening following news that the former presidential candidate, Dr Kizza Besigye, who was later charged with treason, was being moved away from the police cells to another place.}<\/p>\n

The houses cleared and the streets filled. Traders locked up shops. Hundreds of locals abandoned their homes.
\nThey poured out to the streets and Moroto Police Station to bid farewell to Dr Besigye with gifts of tomatoes, chicken, turkeys and cash. Most of them had earlier been denied access to see Besigye at Moroto Police Station.<\/p>\n

Curious crowd
\nCuriosity was raging high among the residents after seeing a helicopter land in the bushes at Nakapelimen ground. Whether the helicopter was a decoy to dupe the crowds into one direction as the State took Besigye to a different destination or it was a mere coincidence, is a matter of imagination.
\nCrowds camped at the police station entrance waiting for Besigye to come out. Police attempts to chase them away were futile and a scuffle ensued. The residents had speculated that the chopper, which had landed in Moroto town, had come to fly Besigye back to Kampala.
\nThey were right on the departure but wrong on the destination.<\/p>\n

At exactly 6.15pm, Dr Besigye was indeed removed from the police cells aboard a black tinted pick-up but was not taken to Kampala as anticipated. He was taken to Moroto Chief Magistrate\u2019s Court under tight security by counter terrorism and anti-riot police, and military personnel with a police escort fleet.<\/p>\n

The helicopter that had gone to pick Dr Besigye landed at Moroto town at 6.10pm but left without him at 6.50pm and returned to Kampala.
\nDisappointed residents went back to their homes with their gifts.
\nDr Besigye was charged with treason in Moroto Chief Magistrate\u2019s Court at 6pm, one hour past court\u2019s official working time.
\nThe Moroto Chief Magistrate, Mr Charles Yeteise, read him treason charges for only three minutes. Dr Besigye was not allowed to say anything in court nor was he represented by a lawyer. Sunday Monitor learnt that Dr Besigye was charged without him making a statement with police after he refused to make one.
\nHe was then whisked away to Moroto prison until May 25 when he will reappear for mention of his case.
\nTreason is a capital offence only tried by the High Court and attracts up to a death sentence on conviction.<\/p>\n

MP blocked
\nMeanwhile, Mr Roland Mugume, the Rukungiri Municipality MP, who arrived in Moroto to see Besigye during the detention, spent three days at Moroto Police Station seeking to see the FDC leader without success.<\/p>\n

Dr Besigye, the runner-up in the February presidential elections, was on Wednesday arrested in Kampala after a shock appearance in the city centre having beaten the round-the-clock blockade and surveillance of his home.<\/p>\n

As the scuffle with the police was going on, a video showing Dr Besigye swearing in as new president of Uganda was running on You Tube and being shared on Facebook and other social media platforms.<\/p>\n

The video shows Besigye, flanked by other FDC party officials, at an undisclosed location taking both the presidential oath and oath of allegiance before \u201ca lady judge\/commissioner of oath\u201d who is unidentifiable as her face is turned away from the camera.<\/p>\n

Social media shutdown
\nThree hours later, the Uganda Communications Commission shut down all social media platforms citing \u201csecurity reasons\u201d without further elaborating.<\/p>\n

After the arrest on Wednesday, Besigye was bundled into a police van and taken away to an unknown place but a police helicopter later landed with him at Nadunget Airstrip in Moroto at 6pm. He was transported from there by road under tight security to Moroto Police Station.<\/p>\n

Police accused him of holding an unlawful swearing-in. At Moroto police cells, the public was barred from seeing him.<\/p>\n

In the morning of Saturday, the public was still in a restive mood. They were mobilising to go to Moroto Prison to see Dr Besigye.<\/p>\n

Journalists were barred from even taking photographs of Besigye. Counter-terrorism police threatened to shoot any journalist who would take photos of Dr Besigye. They claimed they were acting on orders from \u201cabove\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"FDC<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Shops in Moroto Town in Karamoja sub-region closed and business came to a standstill on Friday evening following news that the former presidential candidate, Dr Kizza Besigye, who was later charged with treason, was being moved away from the police cells to another place.} The houses cleared and the streets filled. Traders locked up shops. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99],"byline":[2481],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-daily-monitor"],"bylines":[{"id":2481,"name":"DAILY MONITOR","slug":"daily-monitor","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2481,"name":"DAILY MONITOR","slug":"daily-monitor","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25358"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25358"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}