Uganda police tear gas striking judges' supporters
05 Mar 2007 17:31:20 GMT Source: Reuters
(Recasts with police teargas, demonstrators) By Tim Cocks and Justin Dralaze KAMPALA, March 5 (Reuters) - Ugandan police fired tear gas and water cannon on Monday at demonstrators supporting a strike by judges over government security forces' seizure of six bailed opposition supporters in a Kampala courtroom. Uganda's judges began the weeklong strike in protest against what they said was an invasion of the courts last Thursday by armed military police. The police attacked suspects who had just been bailed on treason charges and dragged them back to prison. A defiant President Yoweri Museveni defended the military police, saying the judge had been wrong to grant bail to "terrorists." The six defendants had been charged alongside opposition leader Kizza Besigye with plotting rebellion. Last week's attack echoed a similar assault on a Kampala court in 2005, when paramilitaries tried to re-arrest men who had been granted bail in the same long-running case. "The strike starts today," judiciary spokesman Elias Kisawuzi told Reuters. "We are closing business, we are not registering any new cases. Court has been suspended." Besigye and a few hundred of his supporters protested on Monday in support of the strike but were dispersed by truckloads of riot police firing volleys of tear gas. Besigye told Reuters that police tried to arrest him, but he fled to parliament and hid there as armed police deployed around the building. "We shall defy. They can arrest all of us. They can kill us but ... the people of Uganda will prevail," he told reporters. The six, accused of being in the People's Redemption Army rebel group, were first arrested in 2003 after the army said they were found with weapons in northwestern Uganda. President Museveni denied the government had disobeyed court rulings, saying the suspects had been re-arrested on new charges of murder. But he said claims of abuses would be investigated. "Giving bail to people accused of acts of treason and terrorism is tantamount to sending them away and out of reach of the law," Museveni added. Judges denounced the siege and invasion of the courtroom. "Bringing police dogs into court buildings, placing military hardware outside the court gate, deploying men in military uniforms -- this is unacceptable," Chief Registrar Lawrence Gidudu told Reuters at the High Court. He said the judges would meet on Friday to decide whether to continue the strike.
