Attack On Ex-Kampala Mayor Lukwago Shows Naked Brutality Under Uganda’s Museveni And Muhoozi

By Black Star News

Photos: YouTube Screenshots

Many predict that a popular uprising in Uganda is increasingly becoming more realistic under the naked brutality of Gen. Yoweri Museveni and his son Gen. Muhoozi Kaenerugaba.

“People are worried; people are scared…You don’t understand how this country is governed…So, you know, we need to talk about these things,” the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM)-leaning lawyer, Medi Mulumba, said on Kampala’s Radio One’s Spectrum talk show program on June 17.

The speed with which Uganda has slide into open tyranny has been lightning in recent weeks. A lot of fear and tension engulf the country at a rate worse than Uganda’s alleged “darkest past” under former presidents Dr. Apollo Milton Obote and Gen. Idi Amin.

“I’m proud of ALL the hurt and pain I will inflict on the ‘CRIMINAL LUKWAGO’,” reads a tweet attributed to Gen. Kainerugaba; the Chief of Defense Forces and Senior Presidential Advisor on Special Operations. Muhoozi also heads the Patriotic League of Uganda; a powerful political organization in the country. The law forbids serving military officers from participating in partisan politics but the law doesn’t apply to Museveni and his family.

Hours after Kampala’s former mayor and the current interim president of the new opposition People’s Front for Freedom, senior lawyer Erias Lukwago was abducted from his home in Kampala in the early morning of June 15, Muhoozi bragged on X (formerly twitter) that he had “captured a FOOL and taken him to the basement”. Muhoozi would later post on X, Lukwago’s pictures kneeling and blind-folded with clasped hands as if begging for mercy or seemingly praying. Another picture depicted Lukwago lying on a tiled floor.

Lukwago, the lead lawyer representing opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye in an ongoing treason case, had been trying to serve Muhoozi with court summons in vain. Besigye, once the nation’s leading opposition figure before the emergence of Bobi Wine, was abducted from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on November 16, 2024 by Ugandan agents working with Kenyans. He has since been denied bail even when his health was reportedly deteriorating in prison.  “We will hang KB [Kizza Besigye] on Heroes’ Day [June 9, 2025]. That’s the best day for him to die,” Muhoozi tweeted on January 16, 2025. Uganda under Museveni’s NRM celebrates every June 9 as its national Heroes’ Day since coming into power in January 1986. 

In yet another twitter post on February 19, 2026, Muhoozi wrote;

“Besigye wanted to kill Mzee [Swahili for old man; whom Museveni now is, at 82], so as far as we are concerned, UPDF [Uganda People’s Defense Forces which Muhoozi heads], he [Besigye] is a dead man walking.”

Besigye, in his recent application before the High Court in Kampala suing Gen. Muhoozi, now contends the latter’s series of public statements likely threatened his life and are prejudicial to his right to a fair trial. On June 11, the High Court in Kampala gave Gen. Muhoozi just seven days to file his defense in an application the jailed opposition leader Dr. Besigye brought against him.

The order was issued by Justice Emmanuel Baguma of the Criminal Division of the High Court; directing all the respondents to file their responses by June 18, 2026. Any rejoinders must be filed by June 25, while the application will be heard on June 30.

The other respondents are Col Peter Ahimbisibwe, Lt-Col Ephraim Byaruhanga and the Attorney General of Uganda. The two senior army officers—Ahimbisibwe and Byaruhanga—are alleged to have spearheaded the operation that led to the arrest of Besigye and his co-accused, aide Hajj Obed Lutale, from Nairobi, Kenya. Besigye had gone to preside over the book launch of Kenya’s former Justice minister who is now an opposition leader, Martha Karua. Karua, Lukwago and Eron Kiiza, are defendant Besigye’s defense lawyers in the treason case. “I think we might hang Besigye by next month. If we don’t hang him, we will shoot him dead. That will be a great day for Uganda,” reads yet another X post pierced together in the court documents.

When Muhoozi’s series of tweets went viral in October 2022 announcing through his official handle @mkainerugaba that he was on a mission to raze colonial borders and capture neighboring Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, within a fortnight, the autocracy was lain bare. “…Constitution? Rule of law? You must be joking! For us, there is only the Revolution and you will soon learn about it!” The weirdly ruthless tweets ignited an online rage in both Uganda and Kenya. 

Central in the application are allegations that Gen Muhoozi repeatedly made public statements on social media platform X that amounted to threats and undermined Besigye’s right to a fair hearing in the long-awaited treason trial.

Furthermore, the application singles out statements suggesting that Besigye would only leave prison “in his coffin” or after apologizing to Gen Muhoozi’s father, Gen Museveni. Other remarks pinning Muhoozi relate to allegations in which he declares that Besigye would not be released from prison until he is subjected to “the full extent of martial law”. Col Besigye, Museveni’s bush war personal physician, has since retired from the armed forces and therefore, as a civilian, he is no longer a subject of martial law whatsoever.

The applicants aver that the statements amount to public prejudgment of guilt, threats of extrajudicial punishment, psychological torture and interference with judicial independence. Thus reads the application: “The 1st respondent’s [Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba] statements, individually and cumulatively, constitute direct threats to life, psychological and mental torture, the public prejudgment of guilt and interference with the independence and impartiality of the court.” According to the defense team, the quoted pronouncements by Uganda’s Chief of Defense Forces undermine the constitutional presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty. In the same vein, the defendants contend that such statements create pressure on the trial court before evidence is adduced and heard.

Similarly, Besigye’s application raises fears and concerns about delays in the treason proceedings against him and his co-accused, Hajj Lutale with whom he was abducted from Nairobi. The case trial which was supposed to kick-start on June 11 did not jump-start because Besigye and Lutale declined to appear in court.

“The arrest of Erias Lukwago raises a question that should concern every Ugandan, regardless of political affiliation: if a senior lawyer can be seized under disputed circumstances while representing a controversial client, what protection remains for the ordinary citizen?” The Observer newspaper published in Kampala asks in a June 17, 2026 editorial. “This is not simply about one man or one dramatic morning in Wakaliga [Lukwago’s home precinct in Kampala]. It is about whether the institutions that support democratic governance can function when legal representation, security operations and political power appear to collide,” the leader comment admonished.

Police confirmed receiving Lukwago from his Special Forces Command (SFC) abductors on June 17. The elite SFC are in-charge of Museveni’s security detail. Lukwago was subsequently produced before a Chief Magistrate who charged him with misprision of treason and remanded him until June 30 when his bail application will be heard. He is accused of concealing his client Besigye’s “treason” against the Government of Uganda.

The Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Parliament, Joel Ssenyonyi, meanwhile, has told Gen. Museveni to “tame” his son, Muhoozi. “If he [Museveni] truly believes in accountability, then he should begin with Gen. Muhoozi, who continues to flout the rule of law…When people see one individual appearing to operate above the law simply because of his family connections, it undermines the justice system,” Ssenyonyi told the press: “No one should be allowed to place themselves above the institutions of the country.”

Rather ironic since Museveni is law unto himself.

“This morning [June 17],” said the LoP, “we held a meeting as Opposition MPs, followed by a press briefing regarding the escalating human rights abuses and abductions by security forces. We cited the recent case of Counsel Erias Lukwago, among many others. I have written to the Rt Hon. Speaker of him to reconvene Parliament so we can deliberate and get responses from the Executive over these matters; considering we raised similar issues at the last sitting of Parliament and the relevant Minsters were tasked to come back with responses.” Parliament Speaker Jacob Marksons Oboth had sent the august House on recess until July 7.

And yet on January 20, 2023, Muhoozi posted: “I will be president of this country after my father. Those fighting the project are lost. MK [Muhoozi Kainerugaba] Movement will win!!” The MK Movement, the Chief of Defense Forces’ political vehicle, has since metamorphosed into the Patriotic League of Uganda. It is only in Uganda where a serving military general owns a political organization and runs the show in the country as a go-to-‘Supreme Leader’ for whom politicians gene flex in order to keep their positions in government, including cabinet.