FBI, ISO in Hunt for Kaweesi Killers

The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kale Kayihura will be the lead investigator into the brutal assassination of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Andrew Felix Kaweesi.

Kaweesi, his bodyguard Kenneth Erau and driver Godfrey Mambewa were gunned down on Friday near Kaweesi's home in Kulambiro in Kampala. The two were buried on Monday at their respective homes in Amuria and Mbale districts while Kaweesi is to be buried today at his home in Kitwekyanjovu, Kyazanga in Lwengo district.

Kayihura will work with an Inter-agency team comprised of the Flying Squad, Special Investigations Division (SID) and Internal Security Organisation (ISO). The team is to be complimented by experts from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations - FBI.

The commandant Flying Squad Herbert Muhangi and the head SID Andrew Mugumya have already taken up their duty in the hunt for the assassins. The two commanders will pick out the best operatives and detectives from their units who will report directly to Kayihura.

According to a source that preferred anonymity as he is not allowed to speak for the force, the initial stages of investigations are currently being handled by the FBI which has sent in forensic and scene of crime experts.

“Officers from FBI are already in the country and have begun their initial investigations. Right now they are reporting to Kayihura. Their findings will definitely guide us in the investigations,” says the source.

President Yoweri Museveni has also set up a team of operatives from Internal Security Organisation (ISO) that will help in the intelligence aspect of the investigations. While visiting the family of the deceased police director on Sunday night, two days after the shooting, President Museveni said ISO would be involved in the hunt due to its elaborate structure at the districts and sub county level.

Attempts to get a comment from the police on why there is need for police to be complimented by ISO and the FBI were futile as no public relations officer was willing to comment on the issue. 

With Kaweesi's death, the police now lacks a national spokesperson. The regional or city-based publicists have all viewed this as a national matter that requires the attention of General Kayihura as IGP. Kayihura's known phone numbers were unanswered by the time of filing this report.

This is not the first time that an inter-security agency team is put together to handle an investigation into the assassination of prominent persons. In 2015, a team led by Kayihura spent months in Busoga Sub-region carrying out investigations and arrests after it was alleged that the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) rebels were behind the killings of Muslim clerics.

After the murder of Joan Kagezi, the Deputy Director Public Prosecution (DPP), in March 2015, police went as far as accepting help from Scotland Yard, the British police detective force known for its elaborate crime investigations.

It's yet to be known if any success was made in the investigations as the suspects whose sketch was made at the time has never been arrested and no specific suspect has been charged with the murder of Joan Kagezi.

In 1987, the government of Uganda invited the Scotland Yard to investigate the brutal killing of Dr Andrew Lutakome Kayiira. The former energy minister in the first Museveni cabinet was on March 7th 1987 gunned down in Makindye, Kampala, at the house of a friend and journalist Henry Gombya. A cloud of suspicion remains on this case, thirty years later, as the findings of the Scotland Yard investigations have never been made public.