I killed 350 people, says former torturer

Press, 29 June 1985, Page 11

I killed 350 people, says former torturer

NZPA-PA London A man who described himself as a former Ugandan secret policeman said yesterdday that he had killed 350 people in nine months and tortured many others on the instructions of the Obote regime. Emmanuel Kaddu, aged 24, speaking at a London news conference called to protest against the British Government’s “cover up” of Ugandan atrocities, said that he had ripped open the stomachs of civilians, broken the “heads and legs” of prisoners with hammers, and dripped molten plastic on them. The news conference, called by the Uganda Democratic Redemption Union, was held as a result of an Amnesty International report issued last week of castrations, amputations, beatings, rapes, and burnings of thousands of civilians. A man who, like Mr Kaddu now also lives in Britain, said that he had been kicked and beaten daily with an iron bar, deprived of food and water, and had only escaped with his life after relatives paid £40,000 ($110,400) to the Army officer in charge of the prison. Mr Kaddu, who said that he fled Uganda and had sought political asylum in Britain, said that the situa-

tion was three times worse now than it was under Idi Amin, the President who was ousted in 1979. “I killed a lot of people — about 350. This was during a nine-month period. My colleagues killed more. Most do not even know the number they killed,” Mr Kaddu said. A Foreign Office Minister, Malcolm Rifkind, said last week that although there had been atrocities it was unfair to describe Mr Obote’s governing as a reign of terror. He called on the Uganda Government, to launch a high-level investigation. The chairman of U.D.R.U., Professor Charles Ssali, aged 54, who fled Uganda when Mr Obote became President again, in 1980, said the Government had ignored overwhelming evidence from Amnesty and the International Red Cross. The Ugandan Government has now invited Amnesty International to visit the country to investigate the allegations compiled by two British doctors. They described prisoners being castrated with gelding tongs, branded with red-hot irons and burned with acid and molten rubber. They said that inmates had been starved to the point of being forced to eat the corpses of fellow prisoners and drink each other’s urine.

Their report, described by Amnesty as the most terrifying document it has ever handled, said that prisoners opposing the regime had had eyes gouged out, limbs hacked off, toenails and fingernails ripped out. Women had been raped and had had breasts and buttocks sliced off. Mr Kaddu said that he had joined Mr Obote’s secret police in 1980 and trained with 150 other Ugandans in Cuba. He went to Britain last year after fleeing to Kenya in 1981. “Now, I sometimes sleepwalk at night and I have nightmares and bad dreams about what I did. I really feel bad.” The torture victim, a 45-year-old former Ugandan businessman, gave only the assumed name of David Makima because he said he feared reprisals. He said that he was held prisoner for about two months, accused of supporting guerrilla forces opposed to the Obote regime. He was arrested after a business trip to Britain because, he said the authorities believed he had been buying arms. During his detention he had been subjected to daily beatings with iron bars, kicked until he was bleeding all over, and denied food and water. “They beat me until every part of my body was

covered in blood. They tried to break my shoulder-blades with an iron bar. I still feel the pain. “Inside my tiny cell were about 30 other prisoners. It was so crowded that people died but remained standing because there was no where to fall. “There was dung, urine and blood on the floor. I was just waiting for my name to be called and I knew then that I would be shot. But I was released after my relatives paid the equivalent of about £40,000 to the Army chief in charge of the prison,” he said. Professor Ssali, whose organisation is calling for an end to the torture, a return of exiles, and free and fair Government elections, has protested to the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, about what he said was Britain’s attitude to the allegations. The former consultant surgeon at hospitals in Wolverhampton, Stevenage, and Swindon, said, “We very much regret the off-handed manner in which the Amnesty International report based on four years of research, interviews and expert medical examinations of the victims of the regime, was contradicted publicly without reasonably investigating the facts presented or supplying and evidence to the contrary.”