Uganda: Bobi Wine files a complaint against the state for arbitrary detention
Ugandan opponent Bobi Wine outside the door of his residence in Kampala.
Yasuyoshi CHIBA AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
The singer's lawyers are pleading before the High Court of Justice in Kampala on Thursday to demand his release.
President Yoweri Museveni's main rival is still stranded at home, a week after the presidential election, the results of which he rejects.
It is a new legal battle looming for him.
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A battle to get out of his home
, that is what is at stake in this hearing at the High Court of Justice in Kampala.
Bobi Wine's lawyers ask that their client can be quickly summoned by the judge who must verify the reasons for his placing under surveillance and pronounce, possibly, his final release or on bail.
For this, the lawyers invoke the protection of a "habeus corpus", a legal term which recalls a fundamental freedom: that of not being imprisoned without judgment or valid reason.
Because officially, Bobi Wine is not under house arrest.
This is why his supporters find it difficult to understand why soldiers are camped in front of his home, and why he is deprived of any visit.
The action of his lawyers is precisely to force the authorities to explain the merits of this surveillance.
For Ugandan police spokesman Fred Enanga, this is pre-trial detention, as Bobi Wine risks causing disturbances to public order by potentially galvanizing his supporters to overturn the presidential results.
But Bobi Wine's entourage accuses the authorities of maintaining the blockade to prevent him from going to the Constitutional Court to lodge an appeal
against the results of the presidential election
.
The deadline is Monday.
For the NGO Amnesty International there is no doubt that the detention of Bobi Wine is politically motivated, and the NGO is calling for his release.
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