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The Internal Security Agency has again chosen to be in the news for the wrong reasons.
Many are struggling to make sense of reports that Maj. Gen. Taban Amin, the son of our former president, the late dictator Idi Amin Dada, has been appointed a director at Iso.
Nobody should attempt to crucify the son for the sins of the father. But we painfully recognise that one cannot write about any Amin without alluding to the atrocities that Amin's internal security agency, the State Research Bureau, wreaked on us.
In this case, however, the son carries his own load of negative associations that any right-thinking person recognises will colour any association between him and Iso.
Iso is among the most sensitive statutory bodies entrusted to ensure the security of person and property in Uganda. Any officer appointed to execute this mandate must, therefore, possess impeccable credentials as a law-abiding
citizen.
Mr Taban Amin does not meet this minimum requirement. Instead, he has a well-documented record of acting outside the constitution.
He is a rehabilitated former rebel who, at one point, reportedly forcefully occupied our embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital, Kinshasa.
The government must desist from its now common practice of dumping persons of questionable human rights records at the doorstep of Iso.
Dragging this sensitive institution into such confusion sullies its integrity and amplifies the stories of scary atrocities it is accused of.
It would be prudent, in the future, to involve Parliament in the vetting of officers appointed to manage Iso.
For now, however, Iso and its appointing authority must weigh one simple question: Is Amin an asset or liability to the organisation.
Security agencies should stop hiding behind PRA
Former rebels of the West Nile Bank Front and political leaders in the west Nile region have questioned the alleged existence of a rebel group called the People's Redemption Army.
Opposition politicians have, for sometime, accused the government of conjuring up the alleged rebel group as a pretext for arresting, and incarcerating both real and imaginary enemies of the state.
The government insists that the PRA is real and is the armed wing of renegade soldier and former presidential candidate, Col. Kiiza Besigye. Besigye is in exile in South Africa and is the de facto leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change.
The Government needs to come clean on claims that the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence botched up a guns-for-cash operation sanction by President Yoweri Museveni and dreamed up the PRA as a red herring for its goofs.
In any case, we should not let innocent people rot in j
ail on
trumped-up charges.
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