25-year-old Bony Obicho, a mechanic who was working on National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential candidate Bobi Wine real name Robert Kyagulanyi’s cars during campaigns has narrated his ‘dark’ experience at the hands of the security forces as he was among the over 100 persons arrested from Kalangala during Bobi Wine’s campaign trail in the area.
In an interview with URN, Obicho claims he was tortured to explain how fast he used to repair Bobi Wine’s cars and whether he was trained by foreigners for the job.
Obicho, the father of two children says that the forces must have trailed him for a while during campaign as they observed his unique skills of how he quickly fixed Bobi Wine’s damaged cars on the campaign trail from Jinja, Mbale and Masaka.
On December 30 when they got arrested, Obicho says that he was quickly singled out and thrown into a double cabin car, handcuffed and beaten by men dressed in black while driving him to Kalangala police station.
He says he was not allowed to spend a night at Kalangala police station as he was picked by the army at about midnight and transferred to Kasajagirwa army barracks, Masaka where he was first taken to a sickbay and given pain killers before they the beating resumed.
“They kept asking where I had been trained,” Obicho says, adding that the soldiers were suspecting that Bobi Wine might have taken me to countries like Japan, Israel or German for car mechanics training’s,” he says.
However, according to Obicho, he was introduced to the business of repairing by his father who has a shop around Mulago and he (Obicho) has been repairing cars for the past seven years. He got connected to Bobi Wine through his young brother Mike Wine and his producer Dan Magic who are his regular clients.
On the night of January 1st 2021, he says he was made to sleep naked on a cold cement floor the entire night, given back his clothes in the morning, and taken to another room where he found colleagues arrested from Kalangala. A few days later they appeared before the Masaka Magistrate Court where they were remanded to Kitalya security prison.
It is at Kitalya where Obicho says his health condition worsened and the soldiers called for doctors from Luzira who brought a mobile scan and found that his intestines were damaged. He says the sickbay within Kitalya didn’t have drugs and he had to endure pain for days that followed.
He was among the 13 NUP supporters granted bail on February 8th, 2021. After release, he was taken to Mulago and later transferred to Lubaga Hospital where he’s receiving treatment up to now.