UPDF officer tortured by his boss
Gerald Bareebe, Dily Monitor, Uganda
Kampala
“He hit me and broke my arm. He hit my head with an iron bar and burnt my buttocks using a red hot metal,” Mr Bosco Mubangizi, a 38-year-old private with the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) narrated the harrowing details of how he was tortured by one of his superiors.
Mr Mubangizi, attached to the Chieftaincy of Rehabilitation Centre in Mubende District, Central Uganda said that he was tortured on December 11, 2006 by Capt. Asaba, a Regimental Police (RP) Commander based in Mubende Barracks.
This comes barely three weeks after the Human Rights Watch accused the Ugandan Army of torturing suspects during interrogation.
To add to his misery, Mr Mubangizi – a married father of three has been ordered by the army to go back to Mubende and serve under the same man who tortured him.
“I am now a lame man, I can’t work to help my wife or my children. They are telling me to go back and serve under the same man who almost killed me. Now that he knows that I reported him, he will kill me if I go back,” a tearful Mubangizi said.
An internal investigation by the army, which was sparked off by a Uganda Human Rights Commission inquiry, confirmed that the Mubangizi, RA141781, was indeed tortured.
After learning about the incident, the UPDF Medical Board recommended in a December 5, 2008 sitting at the then army headquarters in Bombo that the victim be compensated to the tune of 25 per cent of his annual salary. A private in the UPDF earns Shs200,000 monthly. Mubangizi said he is yet to receive the money.
How he was tortured
The torture he was subjected to, according to Mr Mubangizi, happened on the very day he returned from a one-month leave. At the Mubende barracks quarter guard, he met the RP commander who asked him for ‘a manual target’. When he said that he did not understand the instruction, Capt. Asaba allegedly started beating him.
Mr Mubangizi says he did not know the meaning of a ‘manual target’ because the term – a reference to an Identification Card – was introduced in the barracks while he was on leave. But Capt. Asaba would have none of his plea.
A scar from Torture.
Mr Mubangizi says the next day; he was arrested and locked up in the barracks’ prison – where he spent nearly two months. He was only released on January 28, 2009 after the officers in charge of the prison saw that his body had started rotting.
With his body still wasting away, Mr Mubangizi says he met a Good Samaritan who carried him and dumped him at the regional offices of Uganda Human Rights Commission at Kibuye, a Kampala suburb where Ms Ida Nakiganda, the officer in charge rushed him to Kadic Hospital in Bukoto for treatment.
Dr Henry Kasozi, the Medical Director of Kadic Hospital, who examined Mr Mubangizi’s four month-old ulna fracture, says in an April 14, 2008 report that the fracture damaged his patient’s elbow, which now limits the free movement of his hand.
Army Responds
The UPDF Joint Chief of Staff, Brig. Robert Rusoke who could not explain why the army had not compensated the victim to-date, told Saturday Monitor on Tuesday that he will raise Mr Mubangizi’s case with the relevant authorities within UPDF.
Army spokesman, Maj. Felix Kulayigye admitted that there are cases of torture amongst UPDF soldiers but added that the army has clearly set out punitive measures for soldiers who are found guilty of torturing others.
“We are going to investigate whoever did it and he should be punished. How can we allow torture when we even abolished corporal punishment within UPDF?”
Maj. Kulayigye added that Mr Mubangizi should be compensated as per the recommendations of the UPDF medical board. “If the medical board recommended that he be compensated, that is not debatable,” he said.
