According to Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper of July 23, 2006, the UPDF’s David Tinyefuza has defended the arrests and continued detention of three Buganda kingdom officials beyond the 48-hour period in which all suspects are supposed to be released or charged in court. The paper reports that Tinyefuza, Mr. Museveni’s Coordinator of Intelligence Services, dismissed the public outcry over the continued detention of the suspects by saying that investigating terrorism-related crimes was complex and that under such circumstances, “some laws can even be suspended”. The last time laws were officially suspended to suppress Buganda’s political aspirations was during the 1966 “state of emergency in Buganda”.

The Buganda officials, Mr. Peter Mayiga, Mr. Medard Lubega Ssegona and Ms. Betty Nambooze, were arrested over the weekend and subsequently charged with charges of inciting violence, promoting war, sectarianism and terrorism. The Monitor also reports that Tinyefuza claims that Buganda, like the rest of the colonial creations all over Africa is a haphazard placement of peoples with different cultures and linguistic characteristics, albeit related in the general sense. Within hours of the arrest of its officials, the Buganda government established a Buganda Emergency Response Committee (BERC), which has issued two press releases to update Baganda and their friends. Buganda Post (www.bugandapost.com) will has and will continue to reproduce the BERC’s press releases as they become available.