By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Uganda’s government says it would drop the court martial against prominent opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who is currently on hunger strike in detention.
“The government is fast-tracking the transfer of Besigye’s case from the court martial to the civil court,” Cabinet spokesman and Information Minister Chris Baryomunsi said on Sunday.
He added, “As a government, we are complying with the ruling of the Supreme Court.”
Besigye, a former ally of longtime President Yoweri Museveni, went on a hunger strike on 10 February in protest at his detention and trial over gun-running in a military court, despite the Supreme Court ruling that he should be tried in a civil court.
The Information Minister said in an earlier message on X that he had visited Besigye in prison on Sunday “in the presence of his personal doctors” and “asked him to resume taking food” pending the case transfer.
Besigye looked weak when he appeared in a courtroom last week. On Sunday, he was taken in an ambulance for treatment at a clinic outside the maximum-security prison where he is being held.
The Supreme Court’s decision was criticised by President Yoweri Museveni and his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s top military commander.
Besigye, 68, has faced arrest many times in his political career but has never been convicted of a crime.
He is a physician who retired from Uganda’s military at the rank of colonel and is a former president of the Forum for Democratic Change party, Uganda’s most prominent opposition group for many years.
He served as Museveni’s personal doctor before they fell out in the 1990s over what Besigye said was Museveni’s slide into authoritarianism.
He has contested and lost four presidential elections to Museveni, who has spent nearly 40 years in power.
