The Police in Kampala have released fourteen supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) who were arrested on Independence Day as they organized to hold prayers.  

Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, Patrick Onyango, said the group including NUP secretary general David Lewis Rubongoya, party spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi, and its head of mobilisation, Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu, were released without any charge.  

“Yes, all the 14 have been released, this was preventive arrest and we have not preferred any charges on them,” Onyango said on Monday, October 9.  

The group was arrested by Uganda People’s Defence Forces and Police who had earlier deployed heavily in Kamwokya and other places in Kampala.  

The soldiers who travelled in a minibus found Rubongoya and Ssenyonyi soon after they had addressed journalists and they were whisked away to Kira Road Police Station where they were detained.  

Several MPs including Mukono Municipality’s Betty Nambooze and Kalungu East’s Francis Katabaazi, among others, stormed the station and demanded their unconditional release.     

According to Onyango, the suspects were picked from their party offices in Kamwokya, Kampala Central Division, for allegedly organising parallel Independence Day celebrations, but added that the celebrations were fronted to dupe the security personnel as they allegedly had other motives.   

Onyango said the Police obtained intelligence information that the NUP supporters were allegedly using the offices as an assembly point for members who would wait to obtain a number that they needed and then go out and demonstrate.  

He said the supporters had planned to burn tyres and disrupt peace and the country’s Independence Day celebrations that were going on at the District Farm Institute in Kitgum, Northern Uganda.  

“Their intention was to disrupt the day’s celebrations,” Onyango said. 

NUP president, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said on X, formerly Twitter, that the raid on their headquarters was to prevent them from addressing the country. 

Kyagulanyi said he hosted relatives of some of the NUP supporters he said were “abducted and disappeared or imprisoned by the regime for supporting change.” 

“We comforted them and shared a prayer for the immediate release and return of their loved ones. Uganda will never be independent for as long as citizens continue being punished for holding divergent political opinions,” he explained. 

“We owe it to ourselves to resist this impunity,” he added.