UGANDAN OPPOSITION PARTY LEADER ARRESTED

Uganda's main opposition leader was taken by police on Monday to a city police headquarters from his home where he has been under house arrest since Friday.

Kizza Besigye has rejected the results of Thursday's polls won by veteran President Yoweri Museveni, and approached his supporters to join a dissent walk on Monday.

Official results gave Museveni 60 percent of the vote against 35 percent for Besigye, who was arrested three times before, during and after the poll.


Police said in an announcement that any such walk would be illegal, including that with the start of the new school term Monday it would likewise  “infringe on the collective rights of the parents and their school-going children”.

Besigye was set under house arrest on Friday after police attacked his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) headquarters blaming party authorities for wanting to discharge their own particular count of results, contradicting electoral law.

Police on Monday took Besigye from his home in Kasangati, north of the capital Kampala, to a police headquarters in nearby Nagalama, as indicated by city police representative Patrick Onyango.

Besigye did not talk as he was packaged into a truck with tinted windows and headed out and Onyango gave no clarification for his detention.

Besigye's wife Winnnie Byanyima, who is also executive director of the charity Oxfam International, tweeted a photograph of riot police outside the family home saying: “It’s like a military barracks. We want peace.”

Besigye has now lost four continuous presidential races. Every time he has cried foul and every time streets protests against his defeat have been quickly squashed by security agents.

Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, hailed his triumph, and rejected Besigye's dissensions and worries  of observer groups who have criticised the election as unfair.

“The opposition are not leaders, they are just demagogues, liars, just talking, talking,” the 71-year old said on Sunday.

“Those Europeans are not serious,” he said in reference to European Union election observers who said Uganda’s Electoral Commission lacked transparency and that police were heavy-handed in their treatment of the opposition.