Jailed Reporter Receives Mixed Reception from Prison Mates Monitor (Kampala) October 17, 2002 Posted to the web October 17, 2002
Nabusayi L. Wamboka Kampala It was a breakfast of chicken and chapati washed down with black tea. That was a rather heavy breakfast for most restaurants in Gulu, but it was just as well. After combing most breakfast places in town, they zeroed in on Mina restaurant. A phone call from the Gulu-based 4 Division spokesman Lt. Paddy Ankunda, which kept The Monitor reporter Frank Nyakairu talking, led the men in military uniform to their day's target. Nyakairu was eventually arrested from Mina on Oct. 11, a day after arriving in Gulu, over a now-contested story he wrote about a helicopter gunship crashing while smoking out LRA rebels in Adilang Hills in Pader district. His first night was a chilly one. It was a cell that had been turned into a urinal by its previous occupants. "It was stinking and very cold. There was urine everywhere with only patchy dry areas," he said. Nyakairu spread out his jumper for a bed on the floor. Then he ate a piece of bread and drunk water, both of which he had carried, and later lay down to sleep with the mosquitoes buzzing and the cold biting. Then it started raining. And he had nowhere to sleep because the whole place got soaked within moments. On his second day in the cell, Nyakairu was allowed a mattress and food from friends and relatives. This was to be for the next few days until Tuesday night when hell broke loose. At midnight, a stinking jacket hurled in his face woke him up. It was announcing the presence of his cellmate for the night; a drunk, marijuana-smoking local administration policeman whose crime Nyakairu didn't get to know. "He immediately started struggling for my bedding and it was obvious he was drunk," Nyakairu said. "He pushed me off my bed and took over." Nyakairu became a very frightened young man, but not one without a survival instinct. "When he lit his marijuana stick and started smoking. I was so scared I knew I had to fight for my life," Nyakairu said. When his cellmate went wild and attacked, trying to strangle him, Nyakairu fought back punching and kicking until he heard him call out for help. "Because he was drunk and a little weak, I said I would exploit that weakness and that is how I managed to fight him. Eventually the guards came in and ordered him to one side of the cell and told him not to move." Nyakairu eventually had a candle-lit night. Lighting one candle after another with all eyes on his enemy, he lived another night. "In the morning, he had sobered up and even tried to apologise," Nyakairu said. "We made up and even shared my food." On Wednesday, Nyakairu was transferred to Kampala in handcuffs in a police double cabin car and was immediately checked into a cell for the notorious at Central Police Station. "It was some kind of dungeon with over 200 people all squeezed together, including children, some as young as two," Nyakairu said. "Their mothers have been arrested and because they [children] couldn't be left alone, they came along with them and they have been there, mingling with some very tough guys. Within that dungeon there was another cell for the most hardened fellows." The prisoners told him that this cell (the inner one for the most notorious of criminals) was specifically manned by military intelligence officers. That was where Nyakairu spent his first night back in Kampala. "When I stepped in, several of them told me kulikayo nyo," Nyakairu said. "There was one lying still on one side, who I was told was the famous Black. Right behind me was the man who I was told beat Museveni's security detail during the Independence Day celebrations." The man is called Abdalla Bilal Twombayi from DR Congo. Black is alleged to a hardened criminal whom security agencies had hunted for years. Black was arrested about three weeks ago. Nyakairu said that when his inmates learnt he was the reporter who had written the gunship story, he was bombarded with questions, accusations, but most of all a welcome. "They offered me water and food. I tried to say I'm okay but I was really scared," Nyakairu said. But they were his company for the night. Look out for the most explosive conversation between infamous Black in The Sunday Monitor, and the man who delivered the envelope to Museveni at Kololo. It was the most thrilling longest chat that you don't want to miss.
