The wife of Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye, Winnie Byanyima, has claimed that her husband was kidnapped in Kenya and forcibly returned to Uganda, where he is being held in a military prison.
In a post on X, Byanyima stated that Besigye was seized in Nairobi last Saturday while attending a book launch event.
“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” she said, demanding that the government of Uganda release her husband.
Army spokesperson Felix Kulayigye told the Uganda Radio Network agency that he would be arraigned at a court later.
He did not explicitly confirm whether the military was detaining him.
BBC News has reached out to the Ugandan government for a statement.
According to Uganda’s Daily Monitor, senior members of his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party had assembled at Makindye military court in Kampala, anticipating his appearance.
Kenya’s state-funded human rights body, KNHRC has condemned “any form of abduction of those people who seek asylum in our country”.
Besigye, 68, led the FDC, contesting and losing four presidential elections against incumbent Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
“We his family and his lawyers demand to see him,” his wife wrote on X.
“He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”
Ms. Byanyima is a human rights advocate and the executive director of UNAIDS, the joint UN program established to eliminate AIDS.
Besigye, who was once President Museveni’s personal doctor, later became an opposition leader and has referred to the Ugandan leader as a “dictator.”
He has claimed that previous presidential elections were rigged, a charge the government denies.
The opposition figure has been arrested multiple times. On one occasion, he was shot in the hand, and on another, he suffered eye injuries from being sprayed with pepper.
Authorities have accused him of provoking them, and he has been charged with inciting violence.
Kenyan human rights groups have recently raised concerns following a series of forced deportations from the country, which was once seen as a safe haven for refugees from across the region and beyond.
Last month, four Turkish refugees were abducted by masked men at gunpoint in Nairobi and sent back to Turkey.
In July, 36 Ugandan opposition supporters who had traveled to Kisumu, Kenya, were deported without following proper legal procedures, according to their lawyers.