The Forum for Democratic Change leadership has said they suspect the Ugandan government traded some of their activists including Sam Mugumya for M23 rebels with the DRC government.
Mugumya was arrested in the DRC in 2014 on charges related to subversive activities. The UPDF spokesperson Col Paddy Ankunda said then that Mugumya had been found together with 4 other people in possession of big sums of dollars and documents linking them to a rebel group in eastern DRC with intentions of overthrowing the Ugandan government.
The Opposition party believes Kampala agreed to repatriate the M23 Rebels who are still holed up in Uganda, in return for the Congolese government to slap more serious charges on the FDC activists.
Last month Mugumya and other Ugandans were among the group of over 200 people who were set for trial for being part of the ADF rebel group.
Addressing journalists on Friday at the party headquarters in Najjanankumbi, Harold Kaija, the FDC Deputy Secretary General said they suspect the recent meeting between President Museveni and his DRC counterpart was meant to orchestrate a deal on these grounds.
“We think the transfer of our activists including Mugumya from Ndolo Military Prison to Beni was after the meeting between President Museveni and Kabila in Kasese in which the former agreed to give in the M23 rebels,” Kaija told a news conference.
“Sources tell us that the DRC government felt they were not going to get serious cases against Mugumya and colleagues and decided to put them on the same charge sheet with ADF rebels.”
Kaija said that no official communication had been made to the FDC activists’ relatives back home neither to the party in regards to the transfer from Ndolo to Beni yet they are entitled to legal representation.
“We know it is intended to have them blackmailed and tried under the court martial in DRC before being convicted of offences they don’t know of,” he said.
FDC officials said the party cannot send lawyers to represent the group because of the difference in the legal system but noted they had hired services of Congolese lawyers to help represent them in the Beni court.
“We have been reliably told that its Ugandan soldiers who interrogate them while in DRC but we ask the Congolese government to have them brought back here so they can answer the charges from the Ugandan courts,” said FDC’s Moses Byamugisha.
The FDC officials said they are to deliver a petition to the Congolese embassy early next week in which they will seek to express their concern over the matter.
Sam Mugumya and 4 other FDC activists Aggrey Kamukama, Steven Mugisha, Nathan Bright and Joseph Kamugisha were arrested in DRC in 2014 before being detained but according to the party officials, they were apprehended at the border running away from political persecution.