Colonel Kayanja Quits Wembley

Feb 25, 2003

HE came, cracked hard on criminals but now, it is time to leave.

By Geoffrey Kamali
and Kyomuhendo Muhanga

HE came, cracked hard on criminals but now, it is time to leave.

Operation Wembley chief Col Elly Kayanja (right) is quitting the anti-crime security organ he helped establish to fight armed criminal gangs.

Wembley has been restructured and transformed into the Violent Crime Crack Unit (VCCU).

Kayanja’s deputy and newly-appointed assistant commissioner of Police, David Magara, is the VCCU head. Magara is also Kampala’s deputy Regional Police Commander.

Kayanja said on Monday that he would stay at his Clement Hill Road office to investigate and pass on information to the Police to carry out operations.

Kayanja is the deputy chief of the Internal Security Organisation (ISO).

“I am staying here and my work will be to investigate and give information where necessary, but all operational squads will be under the Police,” he said.

The new changes mark a new phase in the fight against armed gangs in Kampala city and other parts of the country.

Police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said Wembley was just a code- name for the operation for a particular period of time. “It is undergoing a re-organisation,” he said.

Suspects at Wembley’s operations base on Clement Hill Road have been transferred to Kireka, a Kampala suburb, where the new VCCU offices have been set up.

Operation Wembley was created last July under the directive of President Yoweri Museveni, following a spate of armed robberies and murders in the country.
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