Gen. Tumukunde Treason Case: Fresh Details Emerge

By Charles Birungi

At about 7 PM last Thursday, 12 March 2020, a combined security team of police and UPDF officers swooped down on Kololo, a leafy and upscale Kampala suburb and laid siege to an office in which former security Minister Lt. Gen. Henry Tumukunde was engaged in a meeting with some of his aides and campaign coordinators.

The security team, which immediately cordoned off the entire area, was led by the Director of the Police Criminal Investigations Directorate, AIGP Grace Akullo, and Mr. Elly Womanya, the head of Special Investigations Division of the police. Waving their search and arrest warrants, the duo informed the retired General that he was henceforth under arrest for alleged treason charges, and a search of the premises and other properties critical for the rapidly unfolding investigations would immediately follow.

Gen. Tumukunde, a veteran of the NRA resistance war in the 1980s recently declared his presidential ambitions in the forthcoming 2021 general elections and has been holding a series of controversial radio and television appearances to drum up support for his bid. In one such show on a local television station, Tumukunde implored Rwanda to support those who seek regime change in Uganda, leaving many independent commentators and pundits in the country bewildered at the raucous remark. That, and what police later described in an official statement as “seeking to foster hatred that might lead to inter-community violence, fomenting and glorifying violence in general” ultimately set in motion the General’s latest troubles with the law.

This website has now obtained independent and corroborated information from highly placed security sources that prior to the General’s arrest last week, the security agencies had for months maintained a round the clock surveillance on Tumukunde’s activities and networks in Kampala and around the country. 

During the arrest on Thursday, the General was found with Tororo North MP Annett Nyakecho and over a dozen other individuals who have since been detained as well. Police say they are also a subject of the investigations but remain tight-lipped about their identity and possible charges. This website has further learnt that police is also following up leads on other persons of interest in other parts of the country linked to Tumukunde over alleged subversive activities.

Following prolonged woes that saw the former spy chief tried for years over the charge of spreading harmful propaganda, for which he was acquitted, and military misconduct, to which he was found guilty and sentenced to severe reprimand, Tumukunde was in 2015 promoted to Lieutenant General and retired from the army after more than 30 years of service. Later that year, he joined the President Museveni re-election campaign task team which he used to cultivate vast contacts that he now hopes to build upon in his presidential bid. 

Some of the said pro-Tumukunde contacts are members of the media, and some previously NRM party members whom have since fallen out with the party.

“We know them,” intimated the source to this website. “Richard Wanambwa and Alex Atuhaire are his vanguards on the media front, they were on his mobilization team in 2016 and have remained by his side to this day,” asserted the source. Mr. Wanambwa is a former senior reporter at the Daily Monitor while Atuhaire was a news editor at the same newspaper. Both have since moved into private business and run online news outlets of their own.

Other than Tororo North MP Annette Nyakecho who was found with General Tumukunde during the arrest, former Kabarole Woman MP Beatrice Kiraso and a one-time NRM MP aspirant in Kazo, Kiruhura District, Dr David Kamukama, are said to be some of the General’s other close political confidants. The source said that their main task is to build on the 2016 groundwork, and spread their wings throughout the rest of the country.

“But we are ready for them,” boasted the source who only spoke to this website on condition of anonymity. The other member of the Tumukunde inner circle is the little known Dick Muhwezi, who is in charge of the now detained General’s external mobilization task force.

Born in 1959, Tumukunde studied law at Makerere University, graduating in 1982 upon which he immediately joined the NRM resistance war alongside colleagues such as Mugisha Muntu, the late Generals Aronda Nyakairima,  Benon Biraro, and Col Jet Mwebaze. He held several senior positions in the army, notably as Chief of Personnel and Administration, Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, and as Commander of the UPDF 4th Division based in Gulu. He at one time also served as the Director General of Internal Security Organization and army member of parliament.