Uganda: Security Force Executions Reported
The Ugandan government must immediately investigate the reported recent execution of four detainees by state security agents, Human Rights Watch says. The authorities should also reveal the whereabouts of 10 others arbitrarily detained, and must charge or release them. The four men reportedly executed were among 14 detained in August by the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force (JATF), a joint unit drawn from several state security agencies. The men were apparently executed because they were accused of having links to a rebel group.
For Immediate Release:
Uganda: Security Force Executions Reported
(New York, October 3, 2003) -- The Ugandan government must immediately
investigate the reported recent execution of four detainees by state
security agents, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should
also reveal the whereabouts of 10 others arbitrarily detained, and must
charge or release them.
The four men reportedly executed were among 14 detained in August by the
Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force (JATF), a joint unit drawn from several
state security agencies. The men were apparently executed because they
were accused of having links to a rebel group.
The 14 detainees were taken to several secret places of detention where
some were reportedly mistreated, and their current whereabouts remain
unknown. Human Rights Watch learned that the Chieftaincy Military
Intelligence (CMI), a security agency of the JATF, took four of the
detainees, and that they were executed around September 1 in Katikamu
subcounty, Luwero district in central Uganda.
“The government agents implicated in serious rights violations must be
prosecuted in accordance with international standards for fair trials,”
said Jemera Rone, researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Africa division.
“As for the men arbitrarily arrested, they should be immediately charged
with recognizable criminal offences and brought to trial or released
without delay.”
In an open letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Human Rights
Watch urges a full and independent investigation of the four executions,
the detention of the 14 men, and the practice of detention by CMI and
JATF in general.
Human Rights Watch also urges the government to clarify the legal status
of the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force and its relation to other
security agencies, in particular the Chieftaincy Military Intelligence
and the Internal Security Organization. The Ugandan government should
cease the practice of detention without charge or at undisclosed places
of detention.
The letter to President Museveni can be found at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/10/uganda100203-ltr.htm.
For more information please contact:
In Washington, D.C., Jemera Rone: +1.202.368.5414
In New York, Jeff Scott: +1.212.216.1834
In London, Juliane Kippenberg: +44.77.3240.9058
In Brussels, Vanessa Saenen: +322.732.2009