By JONATHAN KAMOGA

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Ugandan presidential aspirant Lt-Gen Henry Tumukunde was arrested late Thursday night by a joint security team led by the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (CID) Grace Akullo.

The team which included officers from army’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) raided his private office in Kololo, in the capital Kampala, armed with both search and arrest warrants.

A brief standoff ensued after the retired general, who also served as Security minister between 2016 and 2017, demanded his lawyer be present. He was, however, arrested and taken to the CID headquarters in Kibuli, about 4km away.

He was later transferred to the Special Investigations Unit at Kireka, in neighbouring Wakiso district, where he spent the night.

According to the police, Gen Tumukunde will be charged with treason for utterances made during a recent television interview in which he appeared to support should Rwanda intervene in Uganda’s politics.

“The arrest follows his utterances in a series of radio and television interviews, which seek to foster hatred that might lead to intercommunity violence, fomenting and glorifying violence in general. He in addition, calls on the support of a neighbouring country to support him in removing the current leadership with or without the ballot,” said police spokesman Fred Enanga in a statement released on Friday morning.

Another arrest

Gen Tumukunde left law school at Makerere University in the early 1980s to join the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA/M) in a guerrilla struggle that brought President Yoweri Museveni to power in 1986.

After seizing power, he served as the head of the army intelligence CMI, chief of the counterintelligence agency -- the Internal Security Organisation and as Security minister.

In 1994, he was elected as a Constituent Assembly delegate for Rubabo County in western Uganda district of Rukungiri. The Assembly was tasked with drawing up the country's Constitution, which was promulgated on October 8, 1995.

He later fell out with President Museveni and was arrested in 2005 and charged in a court martial for “uttering statements prejudicial to good discipline and order in the army.” He was convicted after an eight-year trial and sentenced to a caution, allowing him to walk free. He had been detained two years before the trial began.

Ten years later, in 2015, he was promoted from the rank of brigadier to that of a lieutenant-general and retired from the army.

He became one of the key mobilisers for the President and was credited for dismantling the network of former Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who had challenged Mr Museveni for the presidency in 2016. He was then appointed to Cabinet as Security minister but was dropped barely two years later.

He retreated to private life emerging early this month to declare his intention to run for the presidency in next year’s elections.