While Kenyan authorities deny their involvement in renditioning Ugandan opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, a blood-stained history of collaboration in Western-backed renditions speaks dubiously for itself.
December 7, 2024
Source: African Arguments
Ugandan opposition leader, Dr Kizza Besigye Kifefe at a comrade’s funeral, February 2024. He was captured, abducted and renditioned to Kampala while in Nairobi attending a book launch. Photo courtesy: Kizza Besigye
A clandestine network of spies, a fabricated rendezvous, a carefully orchestrated kidnapping, the misuse of counter-terrorism operatives, a miscalculation of a flailing autocracy, and the alleged overreach of an ambitious successor. These were the component parts that led to Ugandan opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye’s rendition from Kenya on Saturday, 16 November. Lured into a meeting at an apartment block in the upscale Riverside suburb in Nairobi, Dr Besigye was put into a car by Ugandan intelligence forces and driven to the Busia border and taken into military custody. For two days he was held incommunicado. Inside sources believe that the initial idea had been to kill Dr Besigye, in what was thought to be a miscalculated effort by Ugandan President Museveni’s son and head of the armed forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to eliminate dissent ahead of the 2026 general elections. Muhoozi is positioning himself as the natural successor of Museveni.
Besigye is being charged with offences relating to the illegal possession of two pistols and eight bullets (which could have been planted) as part of a greater conspiracy coordinated between Kenya, Switzerland and Greece to depose President Yoweri Museveni. Soon after his abduction, four audio clips began circulating in Uganda of meetings between arms traffickers and Besigye. In the audios, he is allegedly attempting to purchase drones and other weaponry to down the presidential helicopter. Ugandan opposition claim these are fake recordings, generated by AI. Analysis of the audios by the organisation Witness, that ran them through software detecting AI manipulation, were inconclusive. This does not rule out someone pretending to be Dr Besigye or using software to create the voice of Dr Besigye for the recordings. Either way this is a case of unaccountable collaborations between intelligence services, trained and capacitated by their Western partners the US and UK in counter-terrorism operations in East Africa being blatantly deployed to punish political dissent and instill fear.
This rendition serves as a chilling reminder that safe democratic spaces for dissidents, activists and journalists is rapidly shrinking. Renditions occur in the shadows of legality and clandestine operations by unaccountable forces. Washington’s War on Terror mainstreamed this covert practice of sending foreign criminal or terrorist suspects to be interrogated or eliminated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners. Renditions are not extraditions that occur within the legally accepted and protected confines of the law where procedure, defence and recourse are guaranteed. Renditions lack a legal process and an accused’s right to raise concerns that his or her transfer to another country might result in torture of death, violating the international legal principle of non-refoulement.
Kenyan sovereignty no longer protects those that think differently to autocrats. Rather, Kenya, as a faithful client of its Western (and Israeli) patrons, has been deeply complicit in a criminal and internationally illegal practice of kidnapping “security threats” from different countries and surrendering them to regimes that will detain, torture and kill them. For decades this practice has evolved from a targeted instrument aiding the Israeli occupation in Palestine, Gulf War 1, Washington’s war against Al Qaeda affiliates in East Africa. In recent times, this role has become more retail-oriented, oscillating from hosting and protecting suspected genocidaires such as Hutu Power financier, Felicien Kabuga, to hunting and handing over dissidents from Uganda, Nigeria, Turkey, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Rwanda.
Ugandan opposition leader, Dr Kizza Besigye Kifefe at a comrade’s funeral, February 2024. He was captured, abducted and renditioned to Kampala while in Nairobi attending a book launch. Photo courtesy: Kizza Besigye
A clandestine network of spies, a fabricated rendezvous, a carefully orchestrated kidnapping, the misuse of counter-terrorism operatives, a miscalculation of a flailing autocracy, and the alleged overreach of an ambitious successor. These were the component parts that led to Ugandan opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye’s rendition from Kenya on Saturday, 16 November. Lured into a meeting at an apartment block in the upscale Riverside suburb in Nairobi, Dr Besigye was put into a car by Ugandan intelligence forces and driven to the Busia border and taken into military custody. For two days he was held incommunicado. Inside sources believe that the initial idea had been to kill Dr Besigye, in what was thought to be a miscalculated effort by Ugandan President Museveni’s son and head of the armed forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to eliminate dissent ahead of the 2026 general elections. Muhoozi is positioning himself as the natural successor of Museveni.
Besigye is being charged with offences relating to the illegal possession of two pistols and eight bullets (which could have been planted) as part of a greater conspiracy coordinated between Kenya, Switzerland and Greece to depose President Yoweri Museveni. Soon after his abduction, four audio clips began circulating in Uganda of meetings between arms traffickers and Besigye. In the audios, he is allegedly attempting to purchase drones and other weaponry to down the presidential helicopter. Ugandan opposition claim these are fake recordings, generated by AI. Analysis of the audios by the organisation Witness, that ran them through software detecting AI manipulation, were inconclusive. This does not rule out someone pretending to be Dr Besigye or using software to create the voice of Dr Besigye for the recordings. Either way this is a case of unaccountable collaborations between intelligence services, trained and capacitated by their Western partners the US and UK in counter-terrorism operations in East Africa being blatantly deployed to punish political dissent and instill fear.
This rendition serves as a chilling reminder that safe democratic spaces for dissidents, activists and journalists is rapidly shrinking. Renditions occur in the shadows of legality and clandestine operations by unaccountable forces. Washington’s War on Terror mainstreamed this covert practice of sending foreign criminal or terrorist suspects to be interrogated or eliminated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners. Renditions are not extraditions that occur within the legally accepted and protected confines of the law where procedure, defence and recourse are guaranteed. Renditions lack a legal process and an accused’s right to raise concerns that his or her transfer to another country might result in torture of death, violating the international legal principle of non-refoulement.
Kenyan sovereignty no longer protects those that think differently to autocrats. Rather, Kenya, as a faithful client of its Western (and Israeli) patrons, has been deeply complicit in a criminal and internationally illegal practice of kidnapping “security threats” from different countries and surrendering them to regimes that will detain, torture and kill them. For decades this practice has evolved from a targeted instrument aiding the Israeli occupation in Palestine, Gulf War 1, Washington’s war against Al Qaeda affiliates in East Africa. In recent times, this role has become more retail-oriented, oscillating from hosting and protecting suspected genocidaires such as Hutu Power financier, Felicien Kabuga, to hunting and handing over dissidents from Uganda, Nigeria, Turkey, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Rwanda.
Cadres in the dock: Supporters of Kizza Besigye’s FDC-Katonga party, who had been abducted in the Kenyan port city of Kisumu in July and then renditioned to Uganda, at the Nakawa court in Kampala, 8 Oct 2024. They were freed a month later for lack of evidence. Photo courtesy: Kizza Besigye
Two cases in 2017 sent shockwaves through the diplomatic and humanitarian community on the continent. When prominent exiled South Sudanese dissidents – Dong Samuel Luak (a human rights lawyer) and Aggrey Idri (senior member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO)) disappeared from Kenya and arrived in Juba on the 27th of January 2017, we understood they had been renditioned by the brutal South Sudanese intelligence service (NSS). They were subsequently killed.
These are not isolated incidents but part of a wider trend. In July 2021, the separatist leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta airport and renditioned to Nigerian intelligence services. This was allegedly aided by Kenyan authorities. On the 22 October, 2022 another vocal critic of the Juba regime, Morris Mabior, was taken by Kenyan police claiming to be from the Anti-Terror Police Unit. He was never seen again. He was most likely renditioned to South Sudan. In May 2024, a Rwandan human rights defender Yusuf Ahmed Gasana, was abducted from his home in Nairobi and renditioned to Kigali where he is being kept in a secret detention facility. In July 2024, thirty-six members of Dr Besigye’s opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), were assaulted and arrested by Kenyan and Ugandan security forces and renditioned back to Kampala. They were attending a governance training workshop in Kisumu and are now facing terrorism charges.
The Kenyan Law Society recalls that authorities have since 1998 intensified their practice of extraordinary renditions, beginning with US suspects of the terrorist attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, followed by the extradition of Kurdish leader Abdalla Ocalan to Turkey in 1999, the extradition of over 100 men, women and children to Somalia in 2007 and the extradition of 13 suspects of the July 2010 Kampala stadium bombing. Two days after the Kampala bombings in July 2010, a team of FBI officials was sent to assist Uganda in its investigation. They were later joined by elements of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force. The rendition en masse that followed of Kenyan and Ugandan nationals for their suspected role in the detonations at two Kampala restaurants that killed 76, included human rights activists Al-Amin Kimathi and Kenyan lawyer Mbugua Mureithi. Kimathi believes he was framed by the Kenyan government as a pay-back for his human rights work defending victims of extraordinary rendition. He spent a year in Ugandan custody.
Increasingly, Kenya has collaborated with its neighbours to suppress political opposition and public criticism under the mantle of fighting terrorism. Kenya is strategically situated as a vital Western ally in the global war on terror given its proximity to neighbouring Somalia (a fragile state), Sudan (experiencing a brutal civil war), South Sudan (highly unstable and fractured), Uganda (a brutal dictatorship), Ethiopia (unstable and riven with ethnic division), and Tanzania (a partner in silencing dissent). The US and UK depend on Kenya to stabilise the region, assist with peacekeeping operations in Somalia and the DRC, and provide vital intelligence for terrorist cells, financing and operations. Kenya has also been useful in countering Russian operations in several African countries where Wagner Group mercenaries have been deployed to erase Western influence.
Two cases in 2017 sent shockwaves through the diplomatic and humanitarian community on the continent. When prominent exiled South Sudanese dissidents – Dong Samuel Luak (a human rights lawyer) and Aggrey Idri (senior member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO)) disappeared from Kenya and arrived in Juba on the 27th of January 2017, we understood they had been renditioned by the brutal South Sudanese intelligence service (NSS). They were subsequently killed.
These are not isolated incidents but part of a wider trend. In July 2021, the separatist leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta airport and renditioned to Nigerian intelligence services. This was allegedly aided by Kenyan authorities. On the 22 October, 2022 another vocal critic of the Juba regime, Morris Mabior, was taken by Kenyan police claiming to be from the Anti-Terror Police Unit. He was never seen again. He was most likely renditioned to South Sudan. In May 2024, a Rwandan human rights defender Yusuf Ahmed Gasana, was abducted from his home in Nairobi and renditioned to Kigali where he is being kept in a secret detention facility. In July 2024, thirty-six members of Dr Besigye’s opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), were assaulted and arrested by Kenyan and Ugandan security forces and renditioned back to Kampala. They were attending a governance training workshop in Kisumu and are now facing terrorism charges.
The Kenyan Law Society recalls that authorities have since 1998 intensified their practice of extraordinary renditions, beginning with US suspects of the terrorist attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, followed by the extradition of Kurdish leader Abdalla Ocalan to Turkey in 1999, the extradition of over 100 men, women and children to Somalia in 2007 and the extradition of 13 suspects of the July 2010 Kampala stadium bombing. Two days after the Kampala bombings in July 2010, a team of FBI officials was sent to assist Uganda in its investigation. They were later joined by elements of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force. The rendition en masse that followed of Kenyan and Ugandan nationals for their suspected role in the detonations at two Kampala restaurants that killed 76, included human rights activists Al-Amin Kimathi and Kenyan lawyer Mbugua Mureithi. Kimathi believes he was framed by the Kenyan government as a pay-back for his human rights work defending victims of extraordinary rendition. He spent a year in Ugandan custody.
Increasingly, Kenya has collaborated with its neighbours to suppress political opposition and public criticism under the mantle of fighting terrorism. Kenya is strategically situated as a vital Western ally in the global war on terror given its proximity to neighbouring Somalia (a fragile state), Sudan (experiencing a brutal civil war), South Sudan (highly unstable and fractured), Uganda (a brutal dictatorship), Ethiopia (unstable and riven with ethnic division), and Tanzania (a partner in silencing dissent). The US and UK depend on Kenya to stabilise the region, assist with peacekeeping operations in Somalia and the DRC, and provide vital intelligence for terrorist cells, financing and operations. Kenya has also been useful in countering Russian operations in several African countries where Wagner Group mercenaries have been deployed to erase Western influence.
Indigenous Peoples of Biafra leader, Nnamdi Kanu (in white), with his lawyers. Kanu, 57, was renditioned from Kenya in June 2021, on a request by the Nigerian government to the Kenyan authorities, and in cahoots with Interpol, which denies the allegation.
Photo source: Nnamdi Kanu
Complex funding streams worth hundreds of millions of dollars from different US departments and government agencies finance these counter-terrorism programmes, including the East African Counterterrorism Initiative under President Bush that provided a $88 million aid package in 2003; the East African Counter Terrorism Fund approved by Congress in 2012; direct Pentagon support for peacekeeping operations; and the Defense Department’s Global Fund (referred to as Section 1206) that from 2006-2011 funneled over $46 million to Kenya; or the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) that provided Kenya with $49.5 million between 2003-2011.
Kenya’s importance was further catapulted when the US established a Joint Terrorism Task Force – the first of its kind outside of the US, in 2020. And then in May 2024, Washington designated Kenya as a non-Nato ally, the only African country to be conferred with such a status. During a recent visit by CIA Director, William Burns with President Ruto in October 2024, the allies discussed the establishment of a US military base in Turkana in northern Kenya, and the expansion of the Manda Bay base in Lamu on the northern Kenya coast close to the Somali border.
Complex funding streams worth hundreds of millions of dollars from different US departments and government agencies finance these counter-terrorism programmes, including the East African Counterterrorism Initiative under President Bush that provided a $88 million aid package in 2003; the East African Counter Terrorism Fund approved by Congress in 2012; direct Pentagon support for peacekeeping operations; and the Defense Department’s Global Fund (referred to as Section 1206) that from 2006-2011 funneled over $46 million to Kenya; or the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) that provided Kenya with $49.5 million between 2003-2011.
Kenya’s importance was further catapulted when the US established a Joint Terrorism Task Force – the first of its kind outside of the US, in 2020. And then in May 2024, Washington designated Kenya as a non-Nato ally, the only African country to be conferred with such a status. During a recent visit by CIA Director, William Burns with President Ruto in October 2024, the allies discussed the establishment of a US military base in Turkana in northern Kenya, and the expansion of the Manda Bay base in Lamu on the northern Kenya coast close to the Somali border.
South Africa-born Kenya independence-era cabinet minister, Bruce Roy McKenzie (in the middle, bearded), was said to have spied for the British and the Israelis, and was instrumental in staging the raid on Entebbe to rescue Israeli nationals taken hostage by the PLO. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
In 2020, an investigation by Declassified UK reported that a CIA-backed paramilitary group called the Rapid Response Team, was created in Kenya with the aim of combating terrorist activities in East Africa following the 1998 terrorist Embassy bombings and 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. The RRT was designed as a counterterrorism unit undertaking renditions of high-value Al-Qaeda terror suspects in Kenya, in coordination with Kenya’s intelligence service and their Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU). The investigation uncovered that by 2006 Kenya’s intelligence service had dedicated liaison cells working with the CIA, MI6 and Israel’s Mossad. One of the team’s successes was the foiling of a plot simultaneously to attack three hotels in Nairobi during the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August 2009.
The unit’s existence and necessity is not the concern, but their illegal, unaccountable, extrajudicial operations, institutional oversight and the lack of public knowledge. Mistakes are made and families get no answers. In 2019, the unit was also accused of an unconstitutional killing of a mis-identified suspect who ended up being a motorcycle taxi operator. Other extrajudicial killings occurred following the abduction of two Indian polls experts, Mohammed Zaid Sami and Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan ahead of the August 2022 elections. A month later, Pakistani journalist Arshad Shariff was “mistakenly” shot-dead by Kenyan police officers at a roadblock on the Nairobi-Magadi road. This anti-terror unit has since 2013 faced criticism from human rights activists over disappearances, torture, executions and renditions. This was triggered by the disappearance of controversial Muslim preacher Badru Bakari Mramba in November 2012, and the extrajudicial killings of Salim Mohammed Nero, Kassim Omollo and 11 other Terror suspects in June 2013.
While Washington’s training of security services around the world is governed by the Leahy Law that requires prior human rights vetting of any units trained, intelligence services are not covered by this law or any similar legal standards. Criminality begets criminality, the real consequence of the militarisation of US-Africa relations. The collaboration between dictators has been written about and reported on for many years. However, the collaboration between democracies and dictatorships is a much more disturbing development. This is happening on Kenyan soil, an imperfect democracy but one nonetheless.
In 2020, an investigation by Declassified UK reported that a CIA-backed paramilitary group called the Rapid Response Team, was created in Kenya with the aim of combating terrorist activities in East Africa following the 1998 terrorist Embassy bombings and 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. The RRT was designed as a counterterrorism unit undertaking renditions of high-value Al-Qaeda terror suspects in Kenya, in coordination with Kenya’s intelligence service and their Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU). The investigation uncovered that by 2006 Kenya’s intelligence service had dedicated liaison cells working with the CIA, MI6 and Israel’s Mossad. One of the team’s successes was the foiling of a plot simultaneously to attack three hotels in Nairobi during the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August 2009.
The unit’s existence and necessity is not the concern, but their illegal, unaccountable, extrajudicial operations, institutional oversight and the lack of public knowledge. Mistakes are made and families get no answers. In 2019, the unit was also accused of an unconstitutional killing of a mis-identified suspect who ended up being a motorcycle taxi operator. Other extrajudicial killings occurred following the abduction of two Indian polls experts, Mohammed Zaid Sami and Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan ahead of the August 2022 elections. A month later, Pakistani journalist Arshad Shariff was “mistakenly” shot-dead by Kenyan police officers at a roadblock on the Nairobi-Magadi road. This anti-terror unit has since 2013 faced criticism from human rights activists over disappearances, torture, executions and renditions. This was triggered by the disappearance of controversial Muslim preacher Badru Bakari Mramba in November 2012, and the extrajudicial killings of Salim Mohammed Nero, Kassim Omollo and 11 other Terror suspects in June 2013.
While Washington’s training of security services around the world is governed by the Leahy Law that requires prior human rights vetting of any units trained, intelligence services are not covered by this law or any similar legal standards. Criminality begets criminality, the real consequence of the militarisation of US-Africa relations. The collaboration between dictators has been written about and reported on for many years. However, the collaboration between democracies and dictatorships is a much more disturbing development. This is happening on Kenyan soil, an imperfect democracy but one nonetheless.
Screengrab of President William Ruto receiving CIA director, William Burns, at State House, Nairobi on 30 October, 2024. Director Burns, on his second meeting with Ruto this year, was in Nairobi to discuss new military bases for the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Image: Kenya News Media.
Human Rights defenders across Africa are reeling from years of highlighting the dangers and contradictions of such practices; their voices falling on deaf ears. Dr Besigye was the latest leader to be renditioned – one in a long line of political renditions. The blame falls squarely on Kenya but also on Uganda, The US and the UK whose opaque, secretive, unsanctioned and unaccountable actions actively derail democracy and the defence of human rights, and threaten to forment even greater dissent amongst a generation no longer prepared to stands on the sidelines of history. The fight is now between democracy and human rights defenders and the counterterrorist forces and opaque institutional practices that eliminate them.
Human Rights defenders across Africa are reeling from years of highlighting the dangers and contradictions of such practices; their voices falling on deaf ears. Dr Besigye was the latest leader to be renditioned – one in a long line of political renditions. The blame falls squarely on Kenya but also on Uganda, The US and the UK whose opaque, secretive, unsanctioned and unaccountable actions actively derail democracy and the defence of human rights, and threaten to forment even greater dissent amongst a generation no longer prepared to stands on the sidelines of history. The fight is now between democracy and human rights defenders and the counterterrorist forces and opaque institutional practices that eliminate them.
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