The Director General of Internal Security Organisation (ISO), Col Kaka Bagyenda, has removed eight senior directors from their current posts and sent them to a newly created section called Think Tank.
Sources say the affected intelligence officers, who have been working with ISO for more than 20 years, have been sent to work under a “Think Tank” which Col Kaka created yesterday.
The changes come six days after the army raided “safe houses” (illegal torture cells by security agencies), run by ISO in Kampala suburbs of Kisaasi and Kyengera.
The security sources further said the relocated ISO chiefs are those suspected of opposing the director general’s methods of work.
Long serving Lt Col Herbert Muramagi, the senior director-in-charge of operations and Lt Col Frank Banana, senior director for political affairs, are among those who have been removed and relocated to the “Think Tank”, which sources said is a redundant section created to give a semblance of redeployment.
Affected
Others are Lt Col Arthur Were, senior director of socio-economic affairs; Lt Col Charles Ndawula, director of operations; Lt Col Chango Walusukira, director of inspectorate; Maj Arthur Mugyenyi, deputy director of political affairs: Capt Fred Kwesiga, director of economic affairs and Lt Dr Kagoro Kaijamurubi, director of logistics and engineering. When contacted for a response of the new changes in ISO yesterday, Col Kaka questioned why the media was interested in the matter.
“Why do you want to know about our administrative issues?” he said on phone before he hang up.
According to sources, ISO is undergoing tumultuous times and the mood at the intelligence agency is tense following the abrupt sackings of senior spies.
“For the last three years, ISO has had eight directors of operations. This had never happened in the history of the institution. Such continuous and abrupt changes disrupt work,” a source said.
Security sources, who declined to be named, said the President had been receiving information that ISO was running safe houses where people were being tortured and framed with various serious crimes.
Recent raids
The sources further told Daily Monitor that when a joint team of Special Forces and Military Intelligence operatives raided the two ISO safe houses last Friday, they hoped to find a student of Uganda Christian University in Mukono who went missing in March.
According to the sources, the student, whose names were not readily established, was kidnapped from Namugongo after he had received a call from a female friend inviting him for a meeting.
His family later petitioned President Museveni for intervention. An investigation allegedly linked his kidnap to a senior ISO officer (names withheld for now) who is reportedly under investigation over the alleged abduction.
“Those raids were intended to locate that boy but they found other people,” the source said.
When Kisaasi safe house was raided, they found other people including a former military intelligence officer Lt Issa Arinaitwe who in 2018 wrote a document that was circulated on social media, claiming he had been contacted by a neighbouring country to assassinate President Museveni.