{UAH} 48 YRS AGO: FIRING SQUAD FOR THE CHIEF JUSTICE'S KILLER. (For 2nd February)

Picture: His Excellency President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni driving himself at Kisozi ranch recently (Source: Twitter/@KagutaMuseveni)

On February 2nd 1973, Captain Tom Masaba of the Uganda Armed Forces was brought to Mbale stadium and executed by firing squad before a crowd of over 20,000 local residents who had come to see him receive the capital punishment.

Masaba had been sentenced for treason, abductions, and heinous murders of Ugandan civilian officials.

In the four months leading to this execution, several senior government officials, Ugandan elites and influential politicians had been mysteriously abducted and/or murdered. Most prominent was the Amin government Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka, the Amin government Governor of the Bank of Uganda Mr. James Mubiru, the Amin governments Vice Chancellor of Makerere University Mr. Frank Kalimuzo, and several senior elites and reknown politicians who had been political prisoners of the previous Obote regime, and had just been released the previous year in a grand public ceremony by the Amin government. This included Basil Bataringaya who had now also been abducted and disappeared.

The arrest of Captain Tom Masaba arose from a simple detail. On 21st September 1972, three months before Tom Masaba's arrest, four individuals claiming to be government security personnel walked into the Uganda High Court chambers and abducted the Chief Justice of Uganda Benedicto Kiwanuka in broad daylight.

He was never seen again, nor has his body ever been found.

However onlookers noted a detail that would unravel the case: The getaway vehicle used in the abduction was a light blue Peugeot 504 with the licence plate number UUU 171. 

At the time, little did anyone in the crime scene know that this "arrest" was actually an abduction, and it would become an incident edged in the history of Uganda for decades to come.

Right after the abduction, the Chief Justices secretary called both State House (Office of the President), and police to inquire about the incident.

Police investigators were immediately sent on site together with agents from the State Research Bureau, the country's intelligence institution.

After gathering all the eye witness information, the hunt for the vehicle was initiated.

However, investigators would discover that the registration number plate UUU 171 was actually registered to another vehicle, a Volkswagen beetle that belonged to the army. This led police to contact the army and check with the military vehicles registry to whom the vehicle was assigned.

That is when it was discovered that the Volkswagen beetle belonging to the army was being driven Captain Tom Masaba.

He was arrested, and asked to explain how the number plate of his Volkswagen had gotten onto the Peugeot 504 that was involved in the abduction of Ben Kiwanuka, and also asked to produce the army Volkswagen.

That is when Captain Tom Masaba told investigators where to find the vehicle. At house 49, Maluku Housing Estate.

Basically it is information extracted from Captain Tom Masaba, that breathed new energy into the hunt for Ben Kiwanuka's killers.

Masaba had simply confessed where the vehicle was, what he and his gang had been using the vehicles for, and all the assistance he had given the group including pistols and ammunition secretely stolen from the military armoury. Most importantly, Captain Tom Masaba revealed where the terrorists could be found.

Without that critical information, Police and military investigators would have never known where the terrorist hideout was, and would therefore never have turned up at house 49, Maluku Housing Estate.

Captain Tom Masaba's information had indicated that the group was armed, and had been in some form of military training for their terrorist activities in clandestine camps in Tanzania from where they had unleashed not only a fully fledged attack on uganda a few months earlier on 19th September 1972, but also from where they unleashed a reign of terror across Uganda through abductions, assassinations, and murders of civilians associated with the Amin government.

During the planning of their attacks, they had drafted a list of elites of Ugandan officials and political elites for assassination, and were now implementing those assassinations.

That list was found in House 49, Maluku Estate, and is also confessed about by Arnold Bisaase, one of the so-called Ugandan exiles in Tanzania who was involved in the planning of attacks against the Amin government, and who wrote about it in his book "The Guardian Angel".

The details of the police investigation into Ben Kiwanuka's abduction, case 59, were compiled in the 1974 Commission of inquiry. (Some extracts are in the Daily Monitor article in link below) 

Before the deadly confrontation at Maluku Housing Estate, as police was surveilling the designated house from a distance, they had seen the army Volkswagen arriving at the premises, and with the very number plate that had been on the Peugeot 504 during Ben Kiwanuka's abduction now back on the army Volkswagen.

The person arriving in the Volkswagen, driving himself, was Yoweri Museveni.

Since several other murders and abductions had occurred since the Ben Kiwanuka incident, this meant that the military vehicles number plate was possibly being placed on the Peugeot whenever there was a mission, so as to lend credence to the terrorists cover that they were government security officials on Uganda government duty, and thereby intimidate everyone wherever they conducted their broad daylight abductions.

The Peugeot 504 was a better and faster getaway vehicle for such "jobs" than the Volkswagen beetle, and it was a vehicle known to be used by government institutions.

The other terrorists were already in the house when Museveni arrived driving the Volkswagen.

Indeed on arriving at the site, they saw the Volkswagen beetle parked outside and the culprits inside the house engaged in plots for more assassinations, abductions and murders.

Because Tom Masaba's information had indicated that the terrorists were armed and had received some tactical training, the Police surveillance team in plain clothes first called for military backup before attempting the arrest.

As is widely known in Uganda, a shootout ensued once the terrorists realized they had been cornered. They resisted arrest and started shooting at the arresting law enforcement team when asked. To which the police and military team shot back overwhelmingly.

By the time the guns went silent, three of the terrorists were dead, one police officer wounded, and a slightly injured Museveni had managed to escape on foot while shooting with his pistol at those who had attempted to pursue him as he fled and vanished into the nearby forest.

The firing squad of Captain Tom Masaba could be contested on the principle of one being against the death penalty. But not on grounds of justice.

He was a self-confessed armed criminal, one of Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka's murderers.

Because of accusations of extra-judicial killings, the Amin government had responded that it was not in the business of murdering people, and only criminals who were found guilty by the law of serious capital offences were the ones whom government had the grim duty of dispensing their legally prescribed punishment, and the whole judicial process was done publicly because of those accusations of extra-judicial killings.

Captain Tom Masaba had confessed his crimes, his confessions had been confirmed at house 49, Maluku Housing Estate, all evidence had been presented to the military court by prosecutors, and justice had taken its course on February 2nd 1973 where he was put before the firing squad for treason, and some of the worst politically motivated abductions and murders that have ever occurred in the history of Uganda, and which even today, Ugandans still mourn his victims.

These leaders were essentially all victims of a dangerous, cunning and brutal terrorist cell operating on orders of their evil mastermind, Apollo Milton Obote in Daresalaam, Tanzania.

Yoweri Museveni was working with Obote on these assassinations, and was a ring leader in this terrorist cell operating from Maluku Housing Estate. He even writes self-incriminating information in his book "Sowing the Mustard Seed" where he not only refers to the Volkswagen that he arrived in at the terrorist hideout that day, he also says on page 79 that: "The soldiers surrounded the house. They only asked one question regarding our identity we said we were students, and straightaway they told us to get into our vehicle and drive with them to the barracks. That convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that the time to flee is now. Because I was the one who had that vehicles keys in my pocket."

Remember that this vehicle that Museveni was driving is the very vehicle whose registration/ licence plate had been involved in the broad daylight abduction of the Chief Justice of Uganda, never to be seen again.

As Captain Tom Masaba was about to be executed, the Chaplain asked him if he had any last words for the people of Uganda, and the 20,000 Mbale locals who had come to watch his execution. Tom Masaba simply said: "Let those, like me, who are killing innocent people, come out and report to authorities."

Signed: Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin

Son of His Excellency Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada.

Kampala, Uganda.

1 - Daily Monitor research article including extracts of the investigation on Ben Kiwanuka's abduction: www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/amin-kibedi-clash-over-ben-kiwanuka-s-killing-1848920

2 - Another Maluku estate shootout survivor confessions: observer.ug/news-headlines/41714-witness-how-museveni-survived-death-in-mbale

3 - Research article I wrote on the 48th anniversary of the shootout at Maluku Housing Estate, though I confused the names of the terrorists who died in the shootout. Mr. Maumbe Mukwana only died in 2017 though house 49 was his residence in 1973 and his widow still resides their today: ugandansatheart.blogspot.com/2021/01/uah-on-this-day-exactly-48-years-ago.html?m=1

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