One of the first people to notice that Dr Kizza Besigye was in trouble was a longtime political ally and one of the few people that the opposition politician trusted to inform about his movements.
Dr Besigye had communicated to the ally, whose identity has been withheld, to inform him that he was going into a meeting. In a practice honed over two decades of side-stepping security agents, details of the next check-in were agreed, then Dr Besigye and Mr Obeid Lutale, a longtime associate, stepped out of the lobby of Waridi Paradise Hotel and Suites, a budget business-friendly hotel in Hurlingham, a Nairobi suburb. It was afternoon, Saturday, November 16, 2024. The two men had flown from Entebbe into the Kenyan capital earlier that morning to attend the launch of Kenyan politician Martha Karua’s biography scheduled for the next day.
Waiting in the parking lot was an Uber with a destination pre-set on the ride-hailing app: 108 Riverside Apartments. The Uber snaked its way, up Rose Avenue, into Argwings Kodhek Road named after Kenyan politician and lawyer who was the first East African to qualify as a barrister at the Inns of Court in London, and who had been educated in Uganda at St Mary’s College, Kisubi and Makerere University. The trip ended at 108 Riverside Apartments, a recently built 12-storey residential block off Riverside Drive, one of Nairobi’s most desirable postcodes, and just two minutes’ drive from the Uganda High Commission. One of the high-rises mushrooming over Nairobi, 108 Riverside Apartments boasts of 60 two- and three-bedroom apartments, many of which open onto balconies overlooking a landscaped central communal garden.
It was around 4pm when Dr Besigye and Mr Lutale arrived at the complex. They asked the Uber driver to wait and walked into the basement lift lobby of Block C, for their meeting in apartment C1102. It would be the last time anyone saw the two men as free men on Kenyan soil. The Uber driver sat in his car and waited, watching the light drain from the sky as darkness swallowed the senses. When the wait seemed inordinate, he sent one message, then another, and another, to his passengers. Each message was marked as delivered, but none was replied to. Dusk turned into dark, then early evening turned into night, and still the two men were nowhere to be seen.
Midnight came and went, then 2am, 4am, and still no sign of the two men. Finally, at 4:30am, hungry, tired, and very confused, the Uber driver gave up and drove away. With sunrise came some illumination, but mostly of a dark plot. The scheduled check-in by the long-term associate in Uganda had been made, but it had not been responded to. The two men’s phones rang but the calls went unanswered. The front desk at Waridi Paradise Hotel confirmed that the two men had checked in and left but they had not returned. Their bags were in their rooms, but their beds were untouched.
Hope against hope
Friends and close associates held out hope that the two men would reappear shortly, at least in time for the book launch. Dr Besigye was scheduled to speak at the event, which was streamed live on social media, and attended by prominent Kenyan politicians including the recently deceased former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga. Dr Besigye’s empty front-row seat was an unmistakable alarm bell that something was amiss. That sense of dread deepened when the two men’s mobile telephones, which had previously rang but gone unanswered, suddenly became unavailable. The search returned to first principles but sources in Uganda and Kenya’s immigration services confirmed that the two men had entered Kenya from Uganda but had not exited the country.
This was alarming. Kenya had long been a refuge for Ugandans and other East Africans fleeing persecution in their own countries. Dr Besigye had fled there in 1981, one of thousands who fled the brutality of the Idi Amin and Milton Obote regimes. In 1982, Kenyan security agents had allowed Obote’s agents to kidnap Balaki Kirya from a housing estate in Nairobi and rendition him back to Uganda, but mostly crossing into Kenya was the first step to freedom for Ugandan dissidents. Had history repeated itself? As the day wore on, and almost 24 hours after he was last heard from, Dr Besigye’s wife, Ms Winnie Byanyima, herself an NRA/M veteran, Ugandan parliamentarian and international civil servant, telephoned State House and asked to speak to President Museveni to ask if he knew anything.
The President was unavailable. Ms Byanyima then telephoned Gen Caleb ‘Salim Saleh’ Akandwanaho, the President’s brother and special advisor. Sources told this newspaper that Gen Saleh said he did not have any information but promised to check. After a while the senior officer called back and informed Ms Byanyima that he had confirmed that Dr Besigye and Mr Lutale were, indeed, in Ugandan custody.
Night of long drives
Riverside 108 has three blocks: A, B, and C, each rising 12 floors high and with three apartments on each floor. Apartment C1102 is on the eleventh floor of Block C. When our reporters visited, not too long after the two men had gone off the radar, the entire floor was eerily dark. The door to C1102 was firmly shut despite repeated knocks, and no movement could be heard inside. Security guards at the main gate insisted they were unaware of any visitors and declined to release CCTV footage from the day of the disappearance of the two men. With so many comings and goings, the security guards added unhelpfully, it was hard to spot or account for any suspicious activity.
By Tuesday November 19 when Dr Besigye was scheduled to check out of Waridi, an official at the residence confirmed that he and Mr Lutale had not reappeared since their departure on the afternoon of the 16th. Their personal belongings were still in their rooms, their bill still unpaid. Like an inverted California Hotel, they could leave, but they could never check out. Dr Besigye had been expected to fly back to Entebbe on Tuesday but had been a no-show for the flight. A regular user of the micro-blogging platform, X, Dr Besigye had last posted at 10:19pm on Thursday, November 14. By the time this publication went to bed at about 10pm on November 19, 2024, it broke the story of Dr Besigye and Mr Obeid’s kidnap and rendition and revealed that they duo were in custody in Makindye Military Barracks.
The next day the duo was produced before the General Court Martial in Makindye and charged with treason and illegal possession of firearms. Speaking to a delegation of officials from his People’s Front for Freedom political party, Dr Besigye described how they were ambushed by men pretending to be Kenyan nationals, speaking halting Swahili with the forced casualness of strangers in disguise. He said they had gone for a short dinner meeting in Riverside ahead of the book launch when the group descended on them, bundling them into a four-wheel drive vehicle with Kenyan plates. Along the highway, the men spoke only Swahili until the vehicle reached Malaba border crossing between Uganda and Kenya at around 3am.
It was only when one uttered the word ‘kandi’ (a conjunction that means ‘and’ in some Ugandan languages), that the mask slipped, prompting Lutale to question why they had avoided their native languages. The abductors then switched to Luganda and Runyankole, confirming that they were Ugandan security agents. According to Dr Besigye’s account, they were driven through the border without any checks and transferred into a Ugandan-registered vehicle. Many hope that the trial will finally shed light on what happened that night in Nairobi, and the full evidence of the allegations against the men.
Post-script
State prosecutors say the two men and others, including a serving soldier, Denis Oola, conspired in meetings held in Nairobi, Geneva, and Athens, to overthrow the government and shoot down the presidential helicopter. The men deny the allegations but a year later, the trial is yet to begin. Part of the delay was due to the two men contesting their trial in the Military General Court Martial, despite being civilians, and challenges to the nature of their kidnap and rendition from Kenya. Attempts to apply for regular and mandatory bail — the latter based on how long they have been in detention — have so far failed.