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In a chilling repeat of events witnessed just months ago, the legal fraternity in Uganda is once again under siege. Reports emerging this morning confirm that yet another lawyer representing veteran opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye has been violently abducted and detained. The victim, identified as a legal team member associated with Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, was taken simply for fulfilling his professional duty: defending his client in a court of law.
The pattern is unmistakable. In January 2025, lawyer Kiiza Ron was violently removed from a courtroom, physically assaulted, and subsequently imprisoned. His offense? Representing Dr. Besigye. The courtroom—a space meant to be a sanctuary of argument and law—was breached by men in plain cloths who dragged the advocate away as colleagues watched in horror.
Now, barely six months later, history has repeated itself with brutal efficiency.
Witnesses say the latest victim was ambushed shortly after a court session. Unlike a formal arrest, this was a seizure—swift, degrading, and designed to terrorize. And rather than deny the operation, the head of the army and son of the sitting President, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, appears to be celebrating it.
In social media posts reminiscent of his boasts following the May 2025 abduction of opposition presidential candidate Bobi Wine’s aide, Eddie Mutwe, Muhoozi has reportedly begun gloating about the torture and humiliation being inflicted upon the lawyer. “He is learning respect,” one of the posts allegedly read, echoing the same mocking tone used when Mutwe was paraded in military fatigues after his disappearance.
For the opposition, the message is clear: defending Besigye is not a legal act—it is a crime punishable by violence, enforced disappearance, and public mockery from the country’s highest military office.
Erias Lukwago, himself no stranger to state hostility, condemned the act in a brief statement: “We are witnessing the complete weaponization of the security forces against the legal profession. First Kiiza, now another colleague. They want no lawyer to dare show up for Dr. Besigye. This is a dictatorship.”
Human rights organizations have called for the immediate, unconditional release of the abducted lawyer and for Muhoozi Kainerugaba to be held personally accountable for what they describe as “open glorification of torture.”
Yet, as has been the case for years, the calls for accountability meet a wall of silence from the state apparatus.
Eddie Mutwe, abducted in May 2025, remains missing for weeks before being released broken and bruised. Kiiza Ron, jailed in January, was only freed after widespread outcry. The question now is: will this new victim survive the same ordeal?
And for the people of Uganda—watching their courts emptied of advocates, their opposition leaders under house arrest, and the General’s son boasting from the barracks—the question grows heavier with each passing week
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