Army arrests senior officer over torture claims

The Ugandan army has hailed the arrest of a senior officer accused of torturing one of his subordinates as a sign that "torture will not be tolerated in the security services". "If the man is found guilty, he will be swiftly dealt with by a court martial," the army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN. "This is certainly not a common problem. We are shocked and enraged by this act of cruelty," he added. Maj Charles Tebarura was placed under house arrest on Saturday after several eyewitnesses in his military barracks claimed that he had tied one of his military escorts to the back of a truck and ordered the driver to drag him along the ground. The revelation comes just weeks after a report by the advocacy group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), alleged that torture was endemic in Uganda's military and security services. "Military intelligence and security forces have suspended victims from the ceiling for hours or days, beaten them severely with wooden or metal rods, cables, and subjected them to water torture," said the report. It also follows renewed accusations by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) - a domestic body set up to investigate cases of abuse - that torture is a problem in Ugandan army. UHRC Director Margaret Ssekagya told IRIN that "it is good the army is taking allegations like these seriously. We would now like to see the due process of law take its course." But Bantariza said no links between the case in hand and the allegations of the HRW report or any other allegations could be established. "He [Tebarura] was not an investigator trying to extract information. He mistreated the escort because of a personal row," Bantariza said. "That is not what the Human Rights Watch report alleged." Bantariza said the investigation would establish whether or not Tebarura was guilty, but added that "the evidence is damning, based on what eyewitnesses have said".