Team of seven officers set up to study Nalufenya performance before closure
The future of the now controversial Nalufenya police facility is uncertain as the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Okoth Ochola awaits a report from a special committee set up to study its performance.
The committee of seven officers on Thursday visited the Jinja-based facility to assess its working and performance.
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The team comprising directors and officers from the Human Rights and legal services of the Police was constituted following a meeting of police's top decision making organ; the Policy and Advisory Committee (PAC) on Wednesday.
During the PAC meeting, it was resolved that a special team be constituted to visit the facility and give recommendations on the way forward.
According to a reliable source who was part of the meeting, the issues raised by the Advisory committee included the bad image that the facility has in the public domain.
The deputy police spokesperson Patrick Onyango confirmed in a press statement that the Policy Advisory committee did indeed discuss the matter.
"The matter of Nalufenya facility was discussed in the policy Advisory committee but there was no decision or resolution taken, " Onyango said in his statement.
The statement was prompted by a story that appeared in The New Vision on Friday indicating that IGP Ochola had ordered the closure of Nalufenya.
Prior to the top management meeting, IGP Okoth Ochola has met with the commandant Flying Squad Herbert Muhangi and the Director Criminal Investigations Directorate Grace Akullo and asked the two to explain the role of the facility.
Akullo was the one incharge of the special operations in Busoga region in 2014 that led to the former IGP Kale Kayihura turning the facility into a special operation Command Centre and detention facility for high profile suspects.
Nalufenya has since 2014 attracted bad publicity for the police force with the first group of suspects detained there on allegations that they had been working with the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) rebels to commit terrorism in Uganda accusing the police of torturing them from there.
The allegations were shortly after followed by others from suspects arrested in connection to the death of Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi in March 2017. Most prominent among the suspects was the Kamwenge Mayor Geoffrey Byamukama whose pictures went viral in May 2017 having been hospitalised at Nakasero Hospital with deep wounds on his knees and ankles.
Nalufenya which is gazetted as a police station has existed since 1954, initially as police post, then as a police station under KIIRA policing region before it was made a special operations Unit centre.
Before it was turned into a special operation Centre, high profile suspects were being detaibed at the Special Investigations Division headquarters in Kireka. Kireka police station was turned into a special facility in 2006 after it became impossible to detain high profile suspects with other suspects at Central Police Station Kampala.
