Uganda Army chief apologises to US over Bobi Wine claims

Uganda’s army chief has apologised to the United States after accusing its embassy in Kampala of helping opposition leader Bobi Wine evade authorities.

Posting on social media on Friday, Muhoozi Kainerugaba announced that the army was suspending all cooperation with the US embassy in Kampala.

But an hour later, he deleted the post and said he’d been “fed with wrong information.”

Bobi Wine has been in hiding since the presidential election earlier this month when he lost to Kainerugaba’s father, Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni was re-elected to a seventh term, a result Wine called “blatant theft.”

Last week, Kainerugaba threatened to hunt down and kill Wine, boasting that his forces had killed 30 of his supporters, and arrested 2,000 more since the election.

Wine’s wife says she was assaulted by soldiers during a raid on her home last week. Kainerugaba has taken responsibility for the raid but denies that Kyagulanyi was attacked.

But Wine remains defiant. In his own post on social media on Monday, Wine said: “the whole army is looking for one person but they have failed to find me. That means they’re not as strong as they tell you.”

He urged his supporters to do “whatever is possible without breaking the law. They call us outlaws, but we do not break the law.”

The hunt for Wine is being led by Kainerugaba — the president’s presumptive heir — who has responded to Wine's taunts by calling him a coward, a “baboon” and a “terrorist.” He has a longstanding habit of posting offensive tweets, which he often deletes later.

The exchanges between Wine and Kainerugaba have raised tensions after the election, with many Ugandans worried that an attack on Wine could trigger unrest.