"He left Uganda," Eron Kiiza told AFP of Mr Rukirabashaija, 33.

"He told me he was in Rwanda", then was going "to Europe", he added, referring in particular to Germany.

On Twitter, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and one of the targets of the writer critical of power, however affirmed that the latter was not in Rwanda.

Abroad, Mr. Rukirabashaija wishes to have the wounds inflicted during his recent detention, during which he says he was tortured, treated, according to his lawyer.

"He fears being poisoned", in particular after having received "injections of unknown substances during his detention".

Arrested on December 28, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija was charged on January 11 with "offensive communication" towards Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, and towards General Kainerugaba, in a series of publications on Twitter.

He was notably described as "obese" and "grouchy" as the last, whom many see as the successor to his 77-year-old father.

General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, during an official ceremony on June 25, 2016 in Kampala.

PETER BUSOMOKE AFP

"I don't know who this young man is who is said to have been beaten! I had never heard of him before the media started doing it" reacted the general on Twitter after the announcement of the departure of the writer.

He added that he had just spoken to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and that the latter had told him that the writer was "not in Rwanda".

The writer had been released on bail on January 26, according to his lawyer, after having been kept in detention despite a court order ordering his release.

"I will not capitulate"

On Monday, a senior Ugandan magistrate, Douglas Siniza, announced that he would be tried from March 23 and refused to relax the conditions imposed on his release, including a ban on speaking to the press.

In a message posted on Facebook on Wednesday, the writer addressed the magistrate, calling him "a pig's head with glasses".

"You are a disgrace!"

and "I will not appear before you again, dear ass-licker of Museveni and Muhoozi".

"You allow anarchy. You had the power to uphold my rights and set me free, rather than minimize my pleas for torture. These crooks have clearly made me an outcast in my own country", but "I will not surrender ", he added.

Ugandan writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija in court on February 1 in Kampala.

KATUMBA BADRU SULTAN AFP/Archives

Mr Rukirabashaija appeared last Saturday in an interview broadcast by NTV Uganda television which showed his back streaked with apparently painful marks, and scars on other parts of his body.

"They beat me with truncheons everywhere," he said.

He added that he had been forced to dance for days alongside other prisoners, or had been repeatedly forcibly injected with an unknown substance.

He also described the use of pliers to tear bits of flesh from him "on [his] thighs, everywhere".

Before him, other Ugandan dissidents had also said they had been tortured with such tools.

Recent years in Uganda have been marked by acts of repression against journalists, the imprisonment of lawyers and the muzzling of opposition leaders.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on June 4, 2021 in Kampala.

Badru KATUMBA AFP

On Monday, the European Union called for a "full investigation" into human rights violations in the country, worrying about "the significant increase in information on cases of torture, arbitrary arrests, disappearances forced, harassed and attacked human rights defenders, members of the opposition" or environmental activists for more than a year.

Mr. Rukirabashaija published in 2020 "The Greedy Barbarian" (not translated into French), a critically acclaimed satirical novel which describes an imaginary country plagued by corruption.

In 2021, he received the PEN Pinter Prize, awarded each year to a persecuted author for having expressed his convictions.

© 2022 AFP