Leaked tapes: Police witnesses get death threats

Apr 19, 2014

The police informers and witnesses who featured in leaked tape recordings have received death threats, the Police say.

By Pascal Kwesiga

KAMPALA - The police informers and witnesses who featured in leaked tape recordings have received death threats, the Police say.

According to the police spokesperson, Fred Enanga, the witnesses have received death threats from the people they implicated in the tapes that were leaked to the press.

“They [witnesses] have approached us and we have given them protection because their lives have been threatened,” he said.

Some sections of the media have published and played the recordings on air.

The latest tape recording to be leaked features a purported voice of deputy Kampala Lord Mayor, Suleiman Kidandala, discussing the fate of the Lord Mayor, Erias Lukwago, with the Inspector General of Police, Gen. Kale Kayihura, during a secret meeting.

On his part, Lukwago expressed shock over the leaked recordings of what reportedly transpired at a meeting between the police chief and his deputy at a press conference in Kampala on Friday.

Lukwago also expressed dismay that Kidandala had reportedly secretly met with Kayihura and failed to inform him about it.

The deputy mayor, who has admitted having met with the police boss, said he was not the one speaking in some of the parts of the recording.

Enanga told journalists at the police headquarters in Kampala on Friday that the leaked police recordings had been doctored by those who handed them to the media to serve certain interests.

“But we have leads to the people who leaked these tapes and the law will take its course,” he added.

‘We are very careful’

Without confirming if Kayihura has held meetings with informers or witnesses during which he sounds to be inducing them (witnesses) with money to give testimonies in the recordings, Enanga said “it is normal for police to buy intelligence and this is done everywhere. We buy information at various levels.”

Asked if it is possible for “informers” to frame people to make money from the police, the deputy police spokesperson, Polly Namaye admitted is possible and so “we are always very careful.”

The media and some politicians, Enanga said, were portraying the police as having overstepped their mandate to meet with informers and witnesses.

“These statements are made out of ignorance of law and our standard operating procedures. We have a legal mandate to proactively investigate criminality in any organization or public body,” he said.

He explained that media reports portraying police as meddling in the internal affairs of political parties were misleading.

“We have intervened in many political party wrangles and solved them. In the case of the NRM party, there was evidence that some people tried to bribe others to change Kankwanzi resolutions.”

He was referring to the two NRM youth leaders Adam Luzinda (Kampala) and Omodo-Omodo (Northern region) who were charged with abuse of office before the Anti-corruption Court recently.

The duo were accused of having fraudulently solicited for bribe, induced and tricked the party members and mobilizers into signing a petition to convene a delegate’s conference to challenge NRM resolutions reached in Kyankwanzi.

At a retreat in Kyankwanzi in February, the NRM caucus proposed that President Yoweri Museveni stands for presidency again unopposed in the 2016 general elections.