Kampala - Police have arrested a suspect accused of breaking into and vandalising the home of opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye in Rukungiri in Western Uganda.
A 20-year-old man, reported to be mentally unstable, was taken into custody on Sunday night after the former presidential candidate’s housekeeper reported a the break in.
During the break in the house’s solar system, electrical power circuit and front door were damaged.
“According to Christians at Christ the King Church, where the suspect plays the keyboard in the church’s choir, Fr Mathias Kwehangana, the parish priest had on Martyrs Day last week announced the disappearance of the suspect, asking Christians to help him return so that he could be assisted,” reported the Daily Monitor.
However, some sceptics have alleged that there could be a more sinister side to the home invasion, claiming that political opponents of Besigye could have used the mentally unstable man to carry out an act of intimidation on their behalf.
Besigye is currently incarcerated in Luzira maximum security prison on the outskirts of Kampala, awaiting trial on charges of treason.
Meanwhile, further violence broke out once again in Kasese in western Uganda’s restive Rwenzori region over the weekend with a royal guard from the Rwenzururu shot dead as he resisted arrest while one of the policemen carrying out the arrest was stabbed in the neck.
Following February’s presidential elections, bloody clashes between the Baamba and Bakonjo tribes left more than 50 people dead, many homes burnt down and people forced to flee their land in the months that followed.
The clashes, while fractured along tribal lines, also involved land and political disputes with the Baamba supportive of Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, led by incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, and the Bakonjo swearing allegiance to the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party under Besigye.
During the confrontations Bakonjo Rwenzuru guards clashed repeatedly with Ugandan security forces.
The Bakonjo from the Rwenzori Kingdom have been accused of wanting to cede from Uganda and establish their own state, a charge they deny.
– African News Agency