Lawyers representing Go Forward presidential candidate John Patrick Amama Mbabazi have told the police to produce Christopher Aine, the missing head of Mbabazi’s private security detail.
Speaking to the EagleOnline, Fred Muwema, one of the lawyers representing Mbabazi said that under Ugandan law it is the duty of the police to produce Aine.
“This ping pong should stop; Aine’s family needs to know whether he is alive or dead, and it falls squarely in the hands of the police,” Muwema, said on phone today.
Muwema was responding to contents of a statement reportedly issued by Police Spokesperson Fred Enanga earlier today, in which the police said the lawyers were in Jinja court on January 6, where they asked the presiding magistrate not to issue a warrant of arrest for Aine, and that the lawyers would produce him.
Aine was supposed to appear in court to answer to violence charges preferred against him following a confrontation he had with police in Jinja.
‘It is also surprising and ridiculous to allege that the police arrested Christopher Aine and are keeping him, when in fact on 6th January, his lawyers were in Jinja Chief Magistrates Court to oppose the issuance of the warrant of arrest for him, where they assured court that given an extension of time, they would produce him in court’, local media reported Mr Enanga as saying in a statement.
But while responding to Mr Enanga’s statement Muwema said: “Lawyers have a duty to defend their clients; they had to tell court basing on police’s statement that he is alive and that they would have him produced in court.” He added: So, the lawyers cannot produce him because he is missing and so they should not hold the lawyers at ransom.”
Another Go Forward lawyer Severino Twinobusingye said Mr Enanga had deliberately omitted some facts in relation to the ongoing Aine saga.
“The spokesperson of the police decided to deliberately leave out certain facts. For example before January 6 we had applied for habeas corpus, so how could we go to court and say we would produce him. So, that statement of Enanga doesn’t add up it leaves a lot to be desired,” Twinobusingye said on phone.
Efforts to contact Mr Enanga both on phone and through SMS were futile as he did not respond to either form of communication, but the Kampala Metropolitan spokesman Patrick Onyango insisted it was only Mr Enanga who was authorized to comment on the Aine issue.
The Aine saga has taken several twists and yesterday social media carried a photo of a lifeless man with apparent stitch marks in the chest and broken teeth, and the poster purported the photo was that of Aine, a wanted man who went missing about two weeks ago, prompting police boss Gen Kale Kayihura to put a bounty of Shs20 million on his head.
Yesterday the photo and accompanying story were published by The Redpepper and its Luganda sister paper Kamunye, leading to the arrest of two Editors of the Redpepper Publications late yesterday.
Then later Aine’s twin sister Ritah Babirye Aine asked the police to task the two newspapers to produce the source of the photograph, saying that could provide a lead in the investigations related to her missing brother.
