Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has acknowledged for the first time that two Kenyan activists who disappeared for more than five weeks were arrested and held by his country’s security services, despite official denials throughout their detention.
Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo vanished in early October after witnesses reported seeing masked, uniformed men seize them outside a political event where they had been campaigning for Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine.
Their disappearance drew sharp criticism from human rights groups and prompted a diplomatic back-and-forth between Nairobi and Kampala.
Museveni, speaking in a live televised interview on Saturday evening, described the two men as “experts in riots” and said they had been placed “in the fridge for some days,” a phrase widely interpreted as a euphemism for secret detention.
The president, now in his fourth decade in power and seeking another term, linked the arrests to what he claimed were foreign-backed efforts to incite unrest in the region.
“Those doing that game here in Uganda will end up badly,” he said, without naming the activists. He added that their release came only after he received calls from “some Kenyan leaders” requesting their return.
Njagi and Oyoo arrived in Nairobi on Saturday, greeted by supporters. Njagi said the men had feared they would not survive the ordeal. “Thirty-eight days of abduction was not easy,” he said. “We didn’t think we were going to come out alive.”
Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi confirmed their release followed “sustained diplomatic engagement” with Uganda.
Vocal Africa, the advocacy group campaigning for the men, said the case should be a turning point for the protection of East Africans across the region.
Amnesty International and the Law Society of Kenya echoed that call in a joint statement, thanking both governments and the activists who mobilized pressure for their release.
Bobi Wine—whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi—accused the Ugandan government of targeting the pair because of their association with his political movement. “If they committed any offense, why were they not produced before court?” he asked in a statement.
Ugandan security forces have long faced accusations of abducting opposition figures, activists, and critics in unmarked operations. Some detainees later reappear before military courts or face criminal charges, while others describe torture, isolation, or mistreatment in custody.
The latest incident mirrors a string of disappearances across East Africa in recent years, including the abduction of Njagi himself in Kenya last year, when masked men seized him during a wave of kidnappings targeting critics of Nairobi.
Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan journalist Agather Atuhaire were similarly detained in Tanzania this year and held incommunicado before being dumped at border crossings.
Both have described physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Tanzanian authorities—allegations officials dismissed as “hearsay.”
The pattern has raised growing concerns among rights groups that East African governments may be quietly cooperating to suppress dissent, using unlawful detentions and cross-border intimidation to silence activists.
