The purge of ‘rogue’ UPDF officers continues in earnest after the arrest and detention at Makindye Military Police barracks of another high-ranking senior officer who has served in the Land Forces, Vox Populi has learned from sources.
The publication cannot disclose the officer’s name for legal reasons. This comes after the Director Defence Publication Information, Maj Gen. Felix Kulayigye, said on the telephone that he was not aware of the arrest.
Over 12 UPDF officers are currently in detention after the leadership under the current Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Kainerugaba Muhoozi, unravelled a murky plot by an intelligence Tsar and his deputies that planted bombs across the city as a ruse to inflate their budgets and feather their nests.
Among the officers detained is Maj Gen. James Birungi, the former Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) head who, before his arrest, had been sent to the neighbouring Burundi as a military attaché. Before the net was cast wider, Birungi’s deputies, Col Peter Ahimbisibwe, then director of counterterrorism at CMI, and Lt Col Ephraim Byaruhanga, who headed Special Operations, two officers with a dogged history of impropriety had been detained alongside 10 other suspects, including eight soldiers and two civilians.
These suspects are linked to a number of what an intelligence probe fears were stage-managed bomb attacks using home-made devices, which were linked to the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist rebel group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
One of the suspicious bombs exploded on June 3rd, 2025, on Martyrs Day near Munyonyo Catholic Shrine, where a woman, allegedly a suicide bomber, was killed. Later on, another ‘ female bomber’ was shot dead at the crowded Kalerwe market on the outskirts of Kampala just before she ‘detonated the bomb.’
This incipient practice meant to inflate budgets by intelligence gathering agencies and the police force has been burbling below the radar.
Senior officers in charge of spying operations have been accused of exaggerating security threats to justify huge budgets.