Ugandan activist found dumped at border after arrest in Tanzania

A Ugandan activist who was arrested and held "incommunicado" in Tanzania after attempting to attend the trial of an opposition leader has been found dumped at the Ugandan border with "indications of torture", a rights group said Friday.

Human rights groups say Tanzania and neighbouring Uganda have accelerated crackdowns on opponents and dissidents as they prepare for presidential elections in the next seven months.

Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire was arrested earlier this week alongside her Kenyan counterpart, Boniface Mwangi, a prominent campaigner against corruption and police brutality in Kenya.

Atuhaire and Mwangi were among activists who went to Tanzania to show solidarity with opposition leader Tundu Lissu at the latest hearing of his treason trial on Monday.

Found ‘abandoned’

But Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan hit out at what she called interference in the country's affairs and urged security services "not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here".

Ugandan rights group Agora Discourse said on X on Friday that Atuhaire had been found "abandoned at the border by Tanzanian authorities."

Its co-founder Jimmy Spire Ssentongo told AFP that she had "indications of torture" on her body.

Lissu's Chadema party has been banned from taking part in Tanzania's elections scheduled for October after insisting on reforms.

Chadema has accused Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.

Kenyan activist Mwangi, who was also found abandoned on a roadside in northern Tanzania near a Kenyan border on Thursday, according to local newspaper Daily Nation, said they endured "gruesome torture".

‘Deteriorating rights’

A consortium of rights groups in the region has described the latest actions in Tanzania as an "indicator of deteriorating human rights and justice standards within the East Africa Community."

Uganda opposition leader Kizza Besigye also faces treason charges after he was abducted by armed men in the heart of the Kenyan capital in November and re-emerged a few days later at a military court in Uganda.

Besigye, 69, has spent over six months in remand -- the legal limit before mandatory bail -- but on Friday, the court refused to grant him bail and rescheduled his hearing to May 29.