By Ruth Anderah:
The Inspector General of police Gen Kale Kayihura has this morning appeared before the Land commission of Inquiry to answer questions regarding police involvement in illegal land evictions.
Kayihura’s appearance follows summons issued to him yesterday by the commission’s chair Justice Catherine Bamugemereire after a group of traders from Aldina Twegaise in Jinja complained that police gave clearance to an illegal eviction that saw their shops on plot 60-62 along Aldina Visram road in Jinja town demolished.
The traders accused the late AIGP Andrew Felix Kaweesi of unlawfully clearing the said eviction and demolition of their shops at night without a court order.
However Kayihura who led a delegation of over ten police officers from the police Headquarters at Naguru denied knowledge of the said matter before the commission and only learnt of this in March 2015 from the office of the speaker of Parliament.
Kayihura explained that at the time of the said evictions, he was busy hunting for the murderers of Muslims sheikhs across the country and that it must have been his deputy Ochora Okoth who could have handled the matter.
The IGP has however regretted the circumstances under which the late Kaweesi whom he said was not a lawyer by training could have gone ahead to sanction an eviction at 3 am without clearance by court.
