NO WAY: Policemen stop Dr Besigye’s car near his Kasangati home yesterday. PHOTO BY ISAAC KASAMANI 

Police yesterday invoked the Criminal Procedure Code, a colonial era and rarely applied law, to stop Dr Kizza Besigye from leaving his Kasangati home in Wakiso District.
The opposition politician, however, is not under ‘house arrest’, the Force’s spokesperson Judith Nabakooba, said in a statement.
Preventive arrest

She said Dr Besigye’s declaration of resuming the walk-to-work demonstration against high fuel and commodity prices – after a two-week lull due to ill-health following his violent arrest by security forces on April 28 - without involving them constituted an “illegal act”.
“In the execution of its constitutional mandate of prevention and detection of crime, and in exercise of the powers conferred upon the Police by Section 26 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Police arrested Dr Kizza Besigye [on] the Nangabo-Kasangati Road,” the statement read in part.
That provision allows a police officer who becomes aware of a design to commit an offence to arrest, without a magistrate’s orders or warrant, the person so designing, if the officer discerns that the commission of the offence cannot otherwise be prevented.
Dr Besigye yesterday said: “I am back here to consult my lawyers on this concept of preventive detention because I don’t know [about] it. I think court will listen to me and restrain these oppressors from infringing on my rights.”
“What they are doing is typical of [former presidents] Amin, Obote times. And I think this government is trying to bring back such obnoxious laws like President Museveni has repeatedly stated, and funny enough they have started applying one even before enacting it,” he said.
There is a difference of legal opinion on the legality of the police action. Some lawyers contacted by this newspaper said while the police cited a right law to confine Besigye to his home, arresting him was illegal.
City attorney Caleb Alaka said it is “unconstitutional”.
“The Code cited by police provides for procedures of how one does certain things. So, for somebody to commit a crime, the law under which the person is arrested must define that crime and the punishment it attracts,” said Mr Alaka, adding that the Criminal Procedure Code Act is not one of the substantive penal laws in Uganda.
“For police to use it is misleading the public and their acts are unconstitutional,” he said. Dozens of police officers commanded by Kira Road DPC James Ruhweza intercepted Dr Besigye, who was being chauffeured to work, at about 8:20am, shortly after he left his house.
Explaing arrest
A spirited argument with the police, whom he accused of infringing on his constitutional right to move freely, ensued but the officers were unmoved.
They warned him that they had orders to arrest him if he defied their instructions to return home. They had reportedly staked-out the politician’s residence overnight.
Ms Nabakooba said Dr Besigye was given the option of either getting arrested and charged, or being allowed to return home. Dr Besigye chose the latter option, she said.
New Uganda Law Society president James Mukasa Ssebugenyi, however, said the police action would be justifiable if it was carried out under Section 24 of the Police Act.
“If they have exercised those powers under that provision, they have not done anything wrong and the same law gives options of remedy for Dr Besigye,” he said by telephone.
Lawyers consulting
Earlier, Mr David Mpanga, one of Dr Besigye’s attorneys, said they are consulting and will advise their client of the remedies available to him.
Four foreign missions representativesyesterday said they are holding “internal consultations” over this matter and it emerged last night that Dr Besigye’s confinement will be an agenda item at the envoys’ meeting today.
The apparent house arrest comes five weeks after the walk-to-work campaign began, a period which has seen him shot, beaten up, doused in pepper spray and violently bundled onto a police truck.
At least nine people have been shot dead by the police and several others injured and hospitalised as it brutally clamped-down on the protests.