Winnie Byanyima Vows to Camp at Luzira Prison if Denied Access to Besigye

Winnie Byanyima, the wife to Dr Kizza Besigye, the four-time presidential candidate has threatened to camp at Luzira Maximum Prison if she is denied access to him.

Besigye is currently on remand at Luzira prisons over charges related to being found in possession of firearms in a foreign country. Addressing a press conference on Thursday at her home in Kasangati Wakiso district, Byanyima, who is the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS-UNAIDS, said she can’t accept the Uganda Prisons Service directives to freeze visits to prisoners starting December 24 to January 3 2025 because she doesn’t trust them to keep Besigye safe.

A week ago, the Uganda Prisons Service had said it was stopping visits to prisoners for almost a month but later revised it to just a week. Byanyima said she had already had an interaction with Johnson Byabashaija, the Commissioner General of Prisons this week to protest the ban. She said, that Byabashaija had given her a green light to visit Besigye but said this should only be for him but not all prisoners.

Byanyima also said she has every reason to believe that the government wants to harm Dr Besigye that’s why it is implementing changes in protocol at the prisons.

She said the day Besigye was sent to Luzira prisons, the Office in Charge Mbaziira who had experience for years was replaced by another junior officer who had joined the Prisons service only in 2020. She said under normal circumstances a person like this can’t be made to head the biggest prison in the country.

When contacted, Frank Baine Mayanja who speaks for the Uganda Prisons Services said, they have a mandate to execute and that they will not take orders from anyone. “Does she run Prisons? Is this the first time we have banned visits to prisons because of security concerns? If she wants to visit her husband, let her get a special permit to do so otherwise she is not going to tell us how we should run prisons,” Baine said.

On the transfer of Mbaziira, Baine said, this was an administrative issue and had nothing to do with Besigye. “Do you know how many OCs have run Luzira prisons before Mbaziira? What if he had been taken to Murchison Bay, would he still have found Mbaziira there? I think she should let us do our job,” Baine said.

Meanwhile, Byanyima said today she was going to Luzira to take a paper and a pen to Besigye so that he can personally write a letter authorising Martha Karua and another Kenyan lawyer she didn’t disclose to lead his legal team. Byanyima said Beisgye will not apply for bail for as long as he is still being tried in the court martial.

She said Besigye doesn’t believe that the Court Martial has the power to try him and Obed Lutale because they are both civilians.

Karua has been denied a temporary certificate by the Uganda Law Council to represent Besigye who had been arrested from Nairobi where he had gone to attend her book launch.

Meanwhile, Byanyima refused to be drawn into disclosing the identity of the British national whom she has previously said had lured Besigye into an apartment block in Nairobi where he was arrested in mid-November. She said all their efforts now are geared towards shifting Besigye from the court martial to a civilian court.

She said once this is done, that’s when they will prove that the cases against him are all tramped up.