Joseph Kabuleta, a veteran sports journalist recently arrested and released has insisted he was tortured while during his four day detention at the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in Kireka.
He was arrested on Friday last week by plain clothed detectives from Drew and Jacs in Lugogo Forest Mall and bundled into a Toyota Wish Motor vehicle registration number UBB 459D.
According to the police, he is accused of posting offensive messages on Facebook in which he allegedly referred to President Yoweri Museveni as a ‘gambler, thief and liar’.
Upon his release, he told the media that he was blindfolded and driven to places he does not know where he spent nights with cuffs on his hands and fitters on his feet as if he was ‘a serial killer’.
However, CID spokesperson Charles Atwiine said torture had never been a policy by the UPF in order to get information from suspects and all police officers were aware of it.
“The Special Investigations Directorate is headed by sober and disciplined officers and it can never be true that he was tortured with their knowledge as he claims. As far as I’m concerned he was not tortured,” he said.
This prompted Kabuleta, a pastor of Watchman Ministries, to come out and say he does not know of anybody whom they (police) have acknowledged to have tortured.
“I don’t have evidence of torture, they don’t do it the way you can have evidence, but I have told my story,” he told journalists outside the SID head office in Kireka.
“If somebody makes you go two nights without sleep, standing all the time, you will not come out and say oh my legs are paining as evidence but that is actually torture. It is torture if you lock me in the same cells with violent offenders, some of whom are murderers yet I made a Facebook post because I don’t belong to that company,” he stated.
He is expected to appear before SIU on Monday.
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