News emerging from Uganda indicate that President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday January 25 replaced Major General Abel Kandiho as the director of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI). According to media reports, Kandiho has been posted to South Sudan as Head of Security Monitoring Mechanism, and he has been replaced at CMI by Maj Gen James Birungi. Under Kandiho, CMI has for the past few years been accused of torturing and killing Rwandans before being dumped at borders without due process. It was not clear whether the two events are connected but four days back, Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, a Senior Presidential Adviser on Special Operations and Commander of Land Forces of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) was in Kigali, in an effort to repair ties between Rwanda and Uganda. To observers, Muhoozi took a good step but Kigali waits to see more convincing practical steps taken by Kampala where outstanding issues that must be believably dealt with include the continued arrest and harassment of Rwandans in Uganda, and the activities of terrorist groups operating in Uganda intent on destabilizing Rwanda. Muhoozi on Tuesday tweeted congratulating both Kandiho and Birungi, who has previously headed the Special Forces Command, which is charged with among others the protection of President Museveni. The U.S. Treasury Department last December imposed financial sanctions on Kandiho over alleged human rights abuses committed under his watch. For several years now, many Rwandans have described how they were locked up in the CMI’s secret detention facilities or “safe houses” and tortured. The dungeons of Mbuya Military Barracks where CMI headquarters are located were other torture chambers for Rwandans, in addition to other CMI dungeons in different parts of the country. More than 20 Rwandans were killed in various parts of Uganda, since April 2019, according to information availed from different sources including relatives of the victims by last September. Many succumbed to the effects of torture at the hands of CMI agents.
