General Muhoozi Kainerugaba

General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the son of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, has reactivated his X account barely a week after he quit the social media platform, citing renewed focus on his military duties.

“I’m back!” Gen Kainerugaba posted on his verified account @mkainerugaba that has quickly amassed hundreds of followers.

He came back in his characteristic style with a series of controversial posts, threatening to “shake up this world!”.

The 50-year-old army general has become increasingly involved in the political arena, in breach of military protocol, reigniting debates about his ambitions to succeed his father, who has been in power since 1986.

Critics have taken a swipe at the general over the statements he has made on social media, which touched on subjects considered taboo for a serving soldier.

He recently sparked anger with a tweet in which he threatened to behead the country’s leading opposition figure, Bobi Wine.

Announcing his return on the micro-blogging platform on Thursday, Gen Kainerugaba ordered Uganda’s security agencies to arrest on the spot any opposition figure found wearing anything that resembles the country’s military uniform.

“And those who do not respect this order…have their own problems,” added the general, who heads Uganda’s land forces.

He also threatened to deport an unnamed US diplomat, citing his reported failure to “salute” the general.

“My only problem is the US Defense Attachè. If I find him anywhere…and he doesn’t stand up and salute me… I will arrest him on the spot!!

The general also wondered what the BBC “said about me”, referring to the corporation’s reporting of his announcement to quit X last week.

This is the second time Gen Kainerugaba has quit and then returned to the social media platform in three years.

He first left in 2022 but returned days later and continued his social media outburst, which have previously sparked diplomatic tensions.

In October that year, he made headlines after he posted a series of tweets threatening to invade neighbouring Kenya, a comment that forced his father to step in and apologise.

Gen Kainerugaba’s recent post threatening to “cut off” the head of Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, drew widespread condemnation in the country.

Although the general apologised about the post which he described as a joke, Bobi Wine said he could not take such threats lightly.

The Ugandan government downplayed the post, with a spokesperson describing Gen Kainerugaba’s social media statements as “casual” remarks that should not be interpreted as reflecting official policy.

Gen Kainerugaba is widely believed to be the heir apparent to his father, who has governed Uganda since 1986, although Museveni has denied that he is grooming him for the presidency.

His X account currently has more than 1,000 followers. The old account had amassed over a million followers.

In his return message, he urged his supporters to follow him back.

“I want all my people back. Bring them all back!”

Seven years after their baby daughter was killed during a brutal midnight operation by police in Kenya at a time of post-election tension, Joseph Oloo Abanja and Lensa Achieng are still raw with emotion as the case against the alleged officers involved has once again been delayed.

“It is a scar that will never fade away,” Ms Achieng, a hotel worker, tells the BBC about the death of six-month-old Samantha Pendo who died with a broken skull and of internal bleeding.

After each postponement or small development, the couple are swamped with calls. Each moment of expectation leads to disappointment in their search for justice.

The family live in the western city of Kisumu – an opposition stronghold where riots broke out in August 2017 amid anger about the results of an election that was eventually re-run because of irregularities.

Their small home was along a road in the Nyalenda informal settlement that witnessed protests on 11 August where anti-riot police were deployed.

That night the couple locked their wooden door and barricaded it with furniture. At around midnight, they heard their neighbours’ doors being broken down and some of the occupants being beaten.

It was not long before police officers arrived at their door.

“They knocked and kicked it several times [but] I refused to open,” Mr Abanja tells the BBC, adding that he pleaded with them to spare his family of four.

But the battering continued until the officers found a small space through which they threw a tear-gas canister into the one-roomed house, forcing the family out.

Mr Abanja says he was ordered to lie down outside the door and then the beating started.

“They were going for my head so I held my hands up, and they beat my hands until they could not hold any more.”

His wife came out of the house holding Samantha, who was having difficulty breathing because of the tear gas, and was not spared either.

“They went ahead beating me [with clubs] while I was holding my daughter,” Ms Achieng says.

The next thing she felt was her daughter holding her tight “as if she was in pain”.

“I turned her and what was coming outside her mouth? It was foam.”

She shouted that they had killed her daughter and it was at that moment the beatings stopped and Mr Abanja was ordered to administer first aid.

The baby came to but was badly injured.

The couple say officers then swiftly left and neighbours helped them rush Samantha to hospital. She died after three days in intensive care.

Their quest for justice has been long and frustrating, like that of dozens of others caught up in the post-poll violence.

Twelve police officers have been expected to be charged with murder, rape and torture – but the hearing at which this will happen, when they will be asked to enter a plea, has yet to happen.

One of the victims’ lawyers, Willys Otieno, reckons that the delay is due to a lack of political will to deliver justice to victims of election violence.

Uhuru Kenyatta went on to win the election re-run later in 2017 – the opposition candidate withdrew from the contest. His deputy William Ruto, with whom he later fell out, was victorious in the next vote – taking office in September 2022.

“The state is no longer interested in prosecuting the perpetrators, [and] it is now left to victims’ counsels – those of us who work with non-governmental organisations and human rights groups to put pressure for the charges to be registered and the accused persons to go to trial,” Mr Otieno tells the BBC.

He accuses the current director of public prosecutions (DPP) of “acting like an attorney of the accused”.

“It is not even the accused persons who’ve applied to court for adjournment – it is the DPP who has applied to court to adjourn the plea taking,” the lawyer said about two failed attempts at taking a plea last October and November.

The third attempt was meant to happen two days ago but was postponed due to the transfer of the presiding judge – and has been rescheduled for the end of the month.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) told the BBC it could not handle a request for comment, but posted on X that “the case remains one of the most high-profile in recent history, with Baby Pendo’s death symbolising the tragic outcomes of police brutality during the 2017 post-election unrest”.

But those involved in the case find the delays troubling.

“It was the Office of the DPP that initiated this case, and they were the ones that reached out to us several years ago. They asked us to join a victim support group that was essentially established to make sure that they would have witnesses for their case,” Irungu Houghton, head of the rights group Amnesty International Kenya, tells the BBC.

After initial investigations, the DPP at the time, Nurdin’ Hajji, initiated a public inquest into the death of baby Samantha. The judge found the police culpable.

Subsequently, the public prosecutor ordered further investigations into other cases resulting from the police operation of August 2017, and brought in independent constitutional investigative bodies, civil society and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The probe uncovered evidence which the DPP said pointed to “the systematic use of violence, including killing, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, against civilians, all of which constitute serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity”.

In October 2022, the prosecutor then sought to have the suspects charged, for the first time in Kenya’s history under its International Crimes Act.

Those to be charged include commanders deemed liable because of their responsibility as superior officers – another first for Kenya.

In September 2023 a new DPP took office, Renson M Ingonga, but there has been little movement in the case since.

There appears to be “an unwillingness to try to prosecute this case,” says Mr Houghton.

Mr Otieno says the victims’ lawyers may consider seeking justice via a private prosecution or going to the East African Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court if the delays continue.

Samantha’s parents support this idea as without justice they say they cannot heal – each postponement reopens their wounds.

“It doesn’t matter how I’ll do it, but I’ll make sure that I have justice,” says Mr Abanja, who is now 40 and makes a living as a tuk-tuk taxi driver.

“Because they took away something that is so much precious of me – she was everything to me, that little girl I named after my mum.”