The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) has denied allegations of arresting two Kenyan activists, Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, who disappeared in Kampala on October 1.
In court documents dated October 21, Silas Kamanda, a colonel in the UPDF, claimed that the force had searched all its detention centres for the two Kenyans, as alleged by the public, but had not found them.
"I, Silas Kamanda, a Colonel in the Uganda People's Defence Forces, currently serving as a Director at the Joint Staff Legal Services for and on behalf of the Uganda People's Defence Forces, in obedience to the writ herein, do satisfy and return that Nicholas Oyoo and Bob Njagi are not in the custody of the Uganda People's Defence Forces,' the declaration read in part.
"We have carried out investigations and searched all relevant detention facilities and records, including lockup registers and custody records, and found no entry relating to the said Nicholas Oyoo and Bob Njagi between October 1, 2025, to date."
Kamanda was responding to a habeas corpus court order in which the UPDF had been ordered to produce the two Kenyans, either dead or alive, in seven days, a summons that expired yesterday, October 21.
On October 14, two weeks after the two went missing, a Ugandan High Court judge, Justice Peter Kinobe, ordered the government to produce the two in court after two Ugandan advocates filed a petition seeking to hold the UPDF and the Uganda National Police (UNP) accountable for the alleged abduction.
Earlier, UNP had also refuted claims that Njagi and Oyoo were in their custody, following frequent accusations from the public.
On October 6, during a State of Security press briefing, UNP Spokesperson ACP Kituuma Rusoke said he had no reports that the two were in police custody.
“On the matter of the two Kenyan activists who disappeared in Uganda, I am not briefed by the police that we have them in our custody. So at the moment, I do not have any information to the effect that they are in police custody,” he said.
This is despite a witness, who had also been abducted and then released later, revealing that they were bundled into a van at gunpoint while seeking services at a petrol station in Kireka township, just outside Kampala, the day they disappeared.
Later came speculations that the two were being kept in a military detention camp in Mbuya, Kampala, according to the court filing by the two Ugandan advocates.
With the military distancing itself from the missing activists, their whereabouts remain unknown, three weeks after the two disappeared. They had been in Uganda to attend a meeting with the National Unity Platform Presidential candidate Bobi Wine, the popular Ugandan opposition leader.
