Ugandan President admits arrest of Kenyan activists

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has for the first time acknowledged that two Kenyan activists who were missing in his country for five weeks had been arrested, reports BBC News. Last month, eyewitnesses reported seeing Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo being forced into a car by masked uniformed men after a political event where they were supporting Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine. News of their release was confirmed on Saturday but up to that point the authorities had denied that they were being detained. Museveni described the two men as ‘experts in riots’ who had then been put ‘in the fridge for some days’. The President, who has been in power for almost four decades and is running for another term in office, was responding to a question about the recent deadly youth-led protests in neighbouring Tanzania. Museveni blamed foreign groups for stoking up trouble and said ‘the ones who are doing that game here in Uganda will end up badly’. Without naming them, he added that the two Kenyan activists were released after he received calls from ‘some Kenyan leaders’ who said they should be handed back. ‘Thirty-eight days of abduction was not easy. We didn't think that we were going to come out alive because we were being abducted by the military,’ Njagi said. Kenya's Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi said their release followed ‘sustained diplomatic engagement between Kenya and Uganda’. Activist organisation Vocal Africa, which had been campaigning for the two men to be freed, said: ‘Let this moment signal an important shift towards upholding the human rights of East Africans anywhere in East African Community’.