The apparent abduction of veteran Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye from the streets of Nairobi brought widespread condemnation from rights groups and politicians on Wednesday.
Besigye, 68, disappeared on Saturday while visiting the Kenyan capital, according to his wife Winnie Byanyima, head of the United Nations programme on HIV and Aids.
He reappeared in a military court in Uganda on Wednesday, where he was hit with charges of “compromising the country’s national security”.
Kenyan rights groups expressed outrage over the manner of his disappearance.
“It either means that our government is not in control of security in this nation, or that we are working in collaboration with external parties to abduct people within the borders of Kenya and extradite them,” said Law Society of Kenya President Faith Odhiambo.
The latter would be “against not only our local but also international laws… which Kenya has signed and ratified”, she said.
The Kenyan Human Rights Commission said it was further evidence against the government of Kenyan President William Ruto, which it said had “breached various international obligations” since winning power in 2022.
“Ironically, it’s this president who promised that none of these egregious acts of human rights violations were going to take place under his administration,” the statement said.
Last month, the Kenyan government admitted that four Turkish refugees had been repatriated to Turkey following reports they were abducted and forcibly returned without due process.
In July, 36 Ugandan members of the Forum for Democratic Change, the party Besigye founded two decades ago, were deported from Kenya and tried in Uganda on terrorism charges.
These were far from isolated incidents.
Also in July, the UN urged Kenya to come clean over the disappearance and alleged extraordinary rendition to Rwanda of human rights activist Yusuf Ahmed Gasana.
That month also saw a Kenyan court rule that police had acted unlawfully in the October 2022 killing of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif in a town south of Nairobi.
The reporter, a strident critic of Pakistan’s military establishment, was shot in the head in his car. The officers claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.
The Pan-African Opposition Leaders Solidarity Network also condemned Besigye’s detention.
“This occurrence is deeply disturbing and of grave concern,” the group said in a statement.
“This emerging pattern of abduction/kidnapping of foreign nationals from Kenyan soil, followed by illegal and forced return and detention in their home countries does not bode especially for us in East Africa,” it said.
Bobi Wine, a former presidential candidate in Uganda, told a broadcaster: “It is very, very shocking that Kenya, which used to be a safe haven for dissidents, is now increasingly becoming an operational zone for the dictatorship in Uganda.”
Other similar incidents in Kenya include the detention in 2021 of Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra.
Kanu, also a British citizen, was returned to Nigeria to face terrorism charges, according to his family and lawyers who called it an illegal rendition.
Another famous case was the 1999 capture of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party . The insurgent leader had spent years on the run from Turkish authorities until he was caught in Kenya.
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