HRF condemns the Ugandan regime’s expulsion of veteran Kenyan lawyer and politician Martha Karua on Monday. Officials arbitrarily prevented Karua from entering the country to attend a court hearing of Erias Lukwago, a detained Ugandan senior attorney alongside whom she leads the defense team of jailed senior opposition leader Kizza Besigye. HRF condemns a disturbing pattern of abuse of power involving Gen. Muhoozi Kainerubaga, Uganda’s military chief, the erratic son of dictator Yoweri Museveni, and the target of a lawsuit from Besigye. Kainerubaga bragged about deporting Karua days after orchestrating Lukwago’s abduction, torture, and transfer to the police.

On Monday morning, Ugandan immigration authorities at Entebbe International Airport stopped Karua after she had disembarked from a flight from Nairobi, Kenya. She was taken to an immigration office where officers snatched her phones and switched them off. She was told that she could not enter Uganda without providing an explanation. Immigration officers then escorted Karua to a waiting area until she boarded the next flight back to Kenya. Once onboard the flight, she was handed a letter from the Ugandan Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control declaring her persona non grata.

Today, Kainerubaga claimed responsibility for personally ordering Karua’s deportation. Karua was singled out of a delegation of high-profile Kenyan legal professionals which flew to Uganda to attend a bail hearing for Lukwago, who was illegally arrested in direct retaliation for seeking to file legal summons over Kainerubaga’s chilling public death threats against Besigye.

Kainerubaga, through the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), asked a court to dismiss Besigye’s lawsuit against him by declaring that the death threats that he issued against Besigye on X are “speculative, unsubstantiated and based on hearsay.” However, in a series of fresh posts on X, Kainerubaga vowed to “hang [Besigye] very soon,” while calling himself “the biggest defender of human rights in Uganda.”