Veteran opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye
Dr Kizza Besigye is reportedly missing in Nairobi, close associates told Monitor on Tuesday night.
The veteran Opposition leader was last seen on Saturday evening at an apartment complex on Riverside Drive in the Westlands area of the Kenyan capital.
Dr Besigye told associates that he was going to meet an unidentified person at the apartment and was dropped there by a taxi driver who remained waiting for him.
However, the driver left after waiting for several hours in vain for Dr Besigye to return.
Associates who spoke to our reporter on Tuesday night said they had not heard from the opposition leader since.
Calls and messages to his telephone number went unanswered. Besigye’s wife, the civil society leader Winnie Byanyima, has been contacted for comment.
The door to the apartment was not answered when a Monitor reporter visited the apartment complex in Nairobi on Tuesday evening and the eleventh-floor flat was unlit.
Guards at the complex, which is made up of several dozen apartments, said it was hard for them to account for the comings and goings of so many residents and visitors.
Opposition leader Kizza Besigye addresses a press conference at his offices on Katonga Road in Kampala on April 18, 2023. PHOTO/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
Besigye flew to Nairobi on November 16, 2024- primarily to attend the launch of a book by Kenyan politician Martha Karua.
We could not find any evidence to show that he had made it to the book launch held in Nairobi on Sunday.
The event was attended by leading Kenyan politicians including former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga.
Besigye had been booked to stay at the Waridi Paradise Hotel and Suites in Hurlingham neighbourhood, about 15 minutes by car from the Riverside Drive apartment. An official at the hotel told Monitor on Tuesday night that Besigye had not returned to the hotel since he left on Saturday.
The official confirmed that Besigye had been due to check out of the hotel on Tuesday morning, but his personal belongings were still in the hotel.
The Opposition leader’s associates said Besigye had been expected to fly back to Entebbe on Tuesday but had been a no-show for the flight.
A review of his social media activity shows that Besigye, a regular user of the micro-blogging platform, X, last posted at 10:19pm on Thursday, November 14.
Besigye ran for President in the 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 general elections and has been arrested severally over the years over his political activism.
His disappearance follows the July 23 arrest of 36 Ugandan activists associated with him in Kisumu, the lakeside city in Kenya close to the border.
The 36 Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party supporters who were arrested at a hotel in Kisumu, Kenya, appear at the Nakawa Magistrate’s Court on July 29, 2024. PHOTO | STEPHEN OTAGE
The political activists were abducted and ferried back to Uganda where they were charged with treason and remanded to Kitalya Prison.
The activists, who were recently released on bail, pleaded not guilty to the charges and said they were attending a workshop when they were arrested.
The 36 activists claim to have been tortured during their detention.
Background
Dr Kizza Besigye Kifefe is a Ugandan physician, politician, and former military officer of the Uganda People’s Defence Force.
He served as the president of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) political party and was an unsuccessful candidate in Uganda’s 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 presidential elections, losing all of them to the incumbent, Yoweri Museveni, who has been president of Uganda since January 26, 1986.
The results of the 2006 elections were contested in court, and the court found massive rigging and disenfranchisement. Besigye allowed an early internal FDC election for a successor president, which took place on November 24, 2012. He did not contest in the last General Election in 20
