I was tied up, they called it 'Rambo' and I was crucified - torture victim speaks

Ssegawa, 22, was reportedly detained and brutally tortured by Ugandan authorities, says the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

HRW’s 62-page report details many horrid activities carried out by the Ugandan authorities, details which Uganda People’s Defence Forces Spokesperson Brigadier Felix Kulayigye and Uganda Police Spokesperson Fred Enanga have dismissed as inaccurate.

"Anybody who has indulged in torture is a fool because torture does not give results," Brigadier Kulayigye stated.

However, the HRW report claims President Yoweri Museveni's administration is guilty of multiple arbitrary arrests and gross human rights abuses.

Ex-detainees reported being raped, beaten, electrocuted, and even being injected with unknown substances.

Pregnant woman abducted and tortured

One victim, a woman identified only as Rachel N, alleges that she was abducted while pregnant in 2019.

Spending months in custody, she claimed she was raped, beaten, and suffered a miscarriage.

"I was tied up...they called it 'Rambo'...I was crucified," she recounted, according to the report. "I was in pain. I stayed for 12 hours. I was removed at 1:00 a.m. in the night. [My body] was swollen before I was taken inside," she added.

Ssegawa’s account of torture ordeal

He alleges that he was thrown into a waiting van, hooded, brought into the basement of an unknown building, and shown a video where he was campaigning for Bobi Wine, President Museveni’s chief opponent in the 2021 presidential polls.

After being shown the video, one of the persons detaining him heated a metal bar over a gas flame then pressed it into his stomach, Ssegawa claims.

"The pain was crushing, my flesh was burning away," Ssegawa recalled, "I told them, 'just kindly kill me'."

Ssegawa said the man then pulled out his fingernails using pliers. Another person then pressed a hot iron into his back and tried to use pliers to pull out his tongue before a colleague stopped him, Ssegawa narrated.

When the “interrogation” was over, Ssegawa's unconscious body was dumped outside a city morgue, as if to underline how close he had come to death.

He lay there, motionless, for some time before mortuary attendants took him in, thinking he was already dead.

However, when they discovered he was still breathing, they quickly rushed him for urgent medical attention.

According to a petition filed in the Hague by Bobi Wine and his party, National Unity Platform, Ssegawa’s fingers were described as necrotic - with dead cells - while he also had bruises, burns, a scarred abdomen and signs of electrocution.

This harrowing account, suffered by Ssegawa, is said to be widespread, according to the report.

The principal targets of such treatment are those who are or find themselves in opposition to the Museveni regime, the report says.

Ssegawa, a former machinist in a carpentry workshop, has now been deprived of his livelihood, given he works with his hands which were badly damaged.

The Ugandan authorities deny his version of events, Spokesperson Enanga says Ssegawa is a petty criminal who was beaten by a mob after attempting to snatch a phone. Enanga adds that Ssegawa was never charged.