The opposition in Uganda is facing a military court after being expelled from Kenya

The wife of Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye says she was kidnapped in neighboring Kenya and brought back home where she was held in a military prison.

In an article on X, Winnie Byanyima wrote that her husband was arrested in the capital of Kenya, Nairobi last Saturday during a book launch event.

“I have now been informed that he is in a military prison in Kampala,” she said, demanding the Ugandan government release her husband.

Military spokesman Felix Kulayigye told Uganda Radio Network that he will appear in court later.

He did not publicly say whether the soldiers were holding him.

BBC News has asked the Ugandan government for comment.

Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor reported that senior members of his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party met at the Makindye military court in Kampala, expecting him to appear there.

The Kenyan government-sponsored human rights organization, KNHRC has condemned “any form of abduction of those people seeking asylum in our country”.

Besigye, 68, led the FDC and ran for president four times against incumbent Yoweri Museveni, who had been in power since 1986.

“We his family and his lawyers want to see him,” his wife wrote to X.

“He’s not a soldier. Are you being held in a military prison?”

Ms. Byanyima is a human rights lawyer and the executive director of Unaids, the joint UN program established to end AIDS.

Besigye was Museveni’s doctor but he ended up as the leader of the opposition and has called the leader of this East African country a “dictator”.

He claimed that the previous presidential election was rigged – a claim denied by the government.

The opposition has been arrested many times before.

In one incident, he was shot in the hand, and in another, he was injured in the eyes after being sprayed with pepper.

The authorities accused him of provocation, and he has been charged with inciting violence.

Human rights groups in Kenya have expressed their concern recently after several incidents of evictions in the country, which was once considered a safe haven for refugees from across the region, and further afield.

Last month, four Turkish refugees were kidnapped by masked men at gunpoint in Nairobi and returned to Turkey.

In July, 36 Ugandan opposition supporters visiting the Kenyan city of Kisumu were deported without due process of law, according to their lawyers.

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