Anti-Besigye State Mzungu Witness’ Evidence Seized by Kenyan Police. Available Videos and Audios Painful to Watch or Listen to

KAMPALA — The prosecution’s case against Dr Kizza Besigye took an unusual turn on Monday as a state witness presented a trove of secretly recorded material that was supposed to illuminate an alleged plot to overthrow the Ugandan government — only for much of the evidence to prove almost impossible to hear or clearly see.

Andrew Wilson, a private security investigator who told the court he had operated undercover, spent hours explaining recordings he said were obtained from meetings in Geneva, Switzerland; Nairobi, Kenya; and Athens, Greece.

More than two hours of video and audio were played before Criminal Division Judge Emmanuel Baguma. But the courtroom struggled to extract meaning from much of what was presented. Some recordings were dominated by echo, distortion and excessive noise. In several instances, the people appearing on screen could barely be identified, while conversations were difficult to follow.

Wilson acknowledged the weakness in the recordings but attributed it to the circumstances in which they were made.

He told court that some of the footage came from an initial meeting during which he was not adequately prepared. He promised to return with recordings of better quality when the hearing continued on Tuesday.

The problem was not merely technical. It became part of the atmosphere inside the courtroom.

Dr Lulume Bayiga was among those seen covering his ears as the recordings played. Some attendees eventually left the proceedings, with some questioning whether the material, in its present form, could demonstrate what the prosecution alleges it demonstrates.

The recordings included clips lasting about 17 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes and 33 seconds. Yet length did not necessarily translate into clarity. Even when people were visible in the footage, the accompanying conversations were frequently difficult to understand.

That left some in attendance wondering whether the recordings established anything about a treasonous conspiracy at all.

The witness’s testimony was intended to supply that missing context.

Wilson said he had infiltrated meetings as part of an undercover operation and used a collection of disguised surveillance devices to document what he encountered.

His equipment was presented almost like a catalogue of covert technology: a camera hidden inside a wall-socket charger; another concealed in a USB charger; an audio device placed on a steel radiator; a magnetic recorder; a Wi-Fi camera; a listening device hidden inside a metallic flower pot; a camera-equipped power bank; and a necklace containing a camera.

He also presented a black flash drive fitted with a camera and a hard drive containing recordings and other material he said he had gathered during the investigation.

According to Wilson, one recording showed a man he identified as Besigye wearing a dark-gray jacket while seated with Joel Wakayima, a Ugandan living in Switzerland.

Wilson alleged that Wakayima had approached him with a proposal to train roughly 60 Ugandan opposition supporters in paramilitary skills and subsequently provide them with weapons.

The witness told court that the alleged discussions involved firearms, grenades and ricin poison. He said the weapons were intended to support a plan to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni’s government.

Besigye is jointly charged with his aide Hajji Obeid Lutale and Capt. Denis Oola. All three deny the treason allegations.

Wilson placed some of the alleged meetings at specific points on the calendar.

He said he recorded a meeting at Athens International Airport on Jan. 28, 2024, followed by another on June 14. He also described a Sept. 29 meeting in Athens, saying he used a covert camera attached to his waistcoat and a sports watch equipped with a camera.

The investigator said that after returning to Uganda, he compiled reports about what he had witnessed and submitted them to James Birungi, the former commander of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, for further management.

His investigation also extended to communications.

Wilson said he purchased a Redmi telephone specifically for communicating with Besigye and Wakayima. He preserved screenshots of conversations from the device and later included them among the material submitted to investigators.

The witness said he eventually transferred his recordings and other material onto a hard drive because he feared the information could be intercepted while passing through an airport.

That precaution became particularly significant when Wilson described what happened around Besigye’s arrest in Nairobi on Nov. 16, 2024.

He told court that he had made a recording during the events surrounding the arrest, but the footage was never saved because Kenyan police seized the devices he had been using before he fled the scene.

Wilson said some of the equipment — including a Samsung phone, a Redmi phone and a flash drive — was subsequently handed over to Ugandan Criminal Investigations Directorate investigators.

The missing Nairobi recording is therefore one of the gaps in a case built heavily around covertly obtained digital material.

Wilson also testified about money appearing in one of the recordings.

He alleged that the money was genuine currency which those involved intended to alter by removing its serial numbers. According to his account, the altered money would then be brought into Uganda as counterfeit currency as part of an alleged effort to destabilise the economy.

The witness did not explain in his testimony how simply removing serial numbers from genuine money would produce the alleged economic consequences.

Another part of Wilson’s testimony concerned Wakayima’s reported problems with immigration authorities in Switzerland.

Wilson said some recordings captured conversations in which Besigye allegedly used a United States telephone number to seek Wakayima’s release after his arrest in Switzerland over immigration-related matters.

The investigator also identified another participant, Frank Kihehere, whose face, he said, was not captured in one of the recordings.

Wilson told Judge Baguma that Kihehere had subsequently threatened him repeatedly. Among the alleged threats, he said, was a warning that his company would collapse.

He further claimed that Kihehere had sent him photographs allegedly taken by Besigye’s wife, Winnie Byanyima, during an earlier court session.

Throughout the presentation, the prosecution sought to establish Wilson not simply as a witness to meetings but as the person who created the digital record now being placed before the court.

Chief State Attorney Richard Birivumbuka and Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Thomas Jatiko led his evidence.

The defence side faces a complicated case in which the accused are in different legal positions. Capt. Oola is represented by State-funded lawyers Sylvia Namawejje Ebitu, Julius Sserwambala and Sarah Awero, while Lutale remains without legal representation.

Besigye’s own absence has already transformed the proceedings.

He is being tried in absentia after refusing to return to court, saying the judicial process is affected by bias and incompetence. He remains in prison and has reportedly continued receiving medication.

The prosecution’s recordings now add another layer to the case: a collection of evidence gathered secretly across international locations, preserved on phones and hard drives, and allegedly designed to document conversations about weapons, paramilitary training and a proposed effort to overthrow the government.

But the courtroom experience of that evidence has raised an immediate practical difficulty.

Evidence can exist on a device without necessarily being easily understood.

On Monday, the recordings existed. The devices existed. The witness offered explanations for them. But for stretches of the hearing, the voices were buried beneath noise and echo, while the images offered too little detail to make identification straightforward.

That distinction could matter as the case develops.

The prosecution says Wilson’s testimony gives the recordings their meaning. The accused deny the allegations.

For now, however, one of the most striking features of the evidence is not what the recordings appear to reveal, but how difficult they are to hear and watch.

And there is an additional complication: Wilson says one of the recordings he made during the Nairobi events surrounding Besigye’s arrest was lost after Kenyan police seized his equipment.

The case, consequently, is being built around both what the witness says the surviving recordings contain — and what the court may never be able to hear from the material that disappeared.

It should be remembered that the Mzungu witness has made shocking allegations, including a plot to assassinate Museveni, as reported Here.

Besigye, the main target of the allegations, was transferred from a hospital to a prison cell and his sisters sent away, even a medical report insists he is unable to talk or write. (See Details Here and There).