Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has narrated how Besigye taught NRA fighters to use chloroform during Kabamba barracks attack.
A trained medical doctor, Dr Kizza Besigye was Museveni’s personal physician and also treated combatants of the National Resistance Army (NRA) war that raged on from 1981-1986.
In this bush war operation to attack Kabamba Barracks and secure guns, Museveni asked Besigye to train soldiers on how to safely inject those at the barracks with chloroform so that they would not die.
“We wanted to confirm whether there were still guns at Kabamba Barracks, we ambushed a vehicle coming from there, captured one individual,” Museveni narrated during the 15th Annual Tarehe Sita Thanksgiving Breakfast at the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) Headquarters in Mbuya.
“We even called Besigye, Who is now engaged some where else, to teach us on how to administer chloroform safely so that the man doesn’t die – [the person] sleeps and then wakes up.”
Museveni, celebrating 45 years since the launch of the attack on Kabamba which sparked the NRA bush war, had come in to fill details as an officer named Lt Gen Mugume gave his testimony on the events before the attack on Kabamba barracks.
The president who had been listening attentively stood up and told the audience what he saw and knew about the operation in which the rebels wanted to know about the guns at the military barracks.
Without credible evidence and intelligence, the NRA rebels had on some occasions failed at the Kabamba mission.
“The idea was to wait for a lone soldier, capture him quietly and extract information. It was an ambush on the footpath, not on the main road,” Museveni said.
Yet even when they deployed chloroform, something interesting happened: Mugume would soon realize that he and the officer he had ambushed knew each other from their Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) days.
So, when Mugume put the Kabamba officer at gunpoint, he pleaded pleaded, “don’t kill me.” To which Mugume realized and shouted, “Tindibakira!”
Besigye has been in some interesting bush war stories, including how he treated Winnie Byanyima’s stomach ache and ended up falling in love with her, as narrated Here and There.
Meanwhile, even Museveni and his son survived being killed during the bush war days, including a day when now Rwandan president Paul Kagame saved him from being killed by Obote’s soldiers in Kireka, as narrated Here.
Besigye is currently in prison for reportedly plotting to kill Museveni, according to leaked audios, as reported Here and There.
