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A Ugandan army intelligence officer has leaked what activists describe as unprecedented footage of a secret detention facility where he says political opponents of President Yoweri Museveni’s government were tortured.
Herbert Matanda Mabonga, who says he was jailed for nearly six months for investigating corruption allegations, recorded the material from his cell and later escaped, according to accounts he gave to AFP by phone.
The videos have circulated widely on TikTok, drawing hundreds of thousands of views and widespread condemnation.
“It is the first time that we have evidence that they cannot refute,” Ugandan rights activist Agather Atuhaire told AFP’s Nairobi office.
Army dismisses allegations
Army spokesperson Chris Magezi dismissed Mabonga’s claims outright, calling them “rubbish.”
Museveni has previously denied he ever “tortured, or ordered anybody to torture, an opponent.”
However, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have documented Uganda’s use of enforced disappearances and torture.
Footage shows opposition adviser
From his cell window, Mabonga recorded Sam Mugumya, a senior adviser to the opposition who disappeared on August 26, 2025.
Mugumya’s lawyer says he was “abducted by the military” and has not been heard from since.
In videos seen by AFP, allegedly filmed within the past three months, Mugumya appears gaunt and frail as he hobbles around a courtyard.
Mabonga says Mugumya was learning to walk again after being “tortured to disability.”
Ugandan authorities, who have never admitted holding Mugumya, have claimed without evidence that he left voluntarily for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The army spokesperson told AFP he was “unaware” whether Mugumya was in detention and declined to answer a question on the army’s use of torture.
‘Beating was the order of the day’
“Beating was the order of the day,” Mabonga told AFP.
“People lost their teeth, and the unfortunate ones had their fingernails plucked out with pliers. Pliers, electric shocks and anything that inflicts pain were used.”
Mabonga said he was allowed to keep a phone in his cell as an army officer, and cried as he listened to fellow prisoners’ screams, an experience he said pushed him to speak out.
“We need to wake up, we need to stand up, we need to have a voice that says, ‘enough is enough’,” he says in one video.
He said he escaped the facility in September, filming its exterior and later revealing its location in Entebbe on social media. Asked how he escaped, he said he found weaknesses in its security, adding, “I’m a soldier.”
The Ugandan army has denied the centre exists, despite the videos showing military equipment, some bearing the initials of the Uganda People’s Defence Force.
Army chief’s online posts
The denials contrast with the online activity of army chief and presidential son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
He claimed on X in October that he “had Sam Mugumya,” before deleting the post.
“He is fine. But I am going to execute him soon,” he wrote.
Kainerugaba has repeatedly boasted of holding opposition figures “in his basement” and shared images of them in which they appear physically abused.
“Uganda’s regime must stop treating political dissent as a crime,” Ugandan NGO Human Rights Defenders posted on X. “You cannot imprison an entire nation into silence.”
Opposition leader Joel Ssenyonyi told parliament that arrested persons must be produced in court rather than held incommunicado in “appalling” conditions.
Other detainees filmed
Mabonga also filmed jailers’ lists of people brought to the facility, mostly government critics, and recorded opposition lawmaker Muwanguzi Kivumbi, who Human Rights Watch says was detained for 19 days in July and beaten by security forces.
Atuhaire said there was no chance of action being taken by the current government.
“All the institutions of the state are serving the violators,” she said.
