On This Day: Chris Rwakasisi Arrested Over Misappropriation of Funds, 1985
Kampala, August 20, 1985 – On this day 40 years ago, former State Minister for Security in the Office of the President, Chris Rwakasisi, was arraigned before the Military Junta High Command and charged with misappropriation of veterans’ funds and attempting to flee the country with USD 40 million from the Bank of Uganda.
Rwakasisi had been arrested a month earlier at the old Jinja Bridge while attempting to cross into exile through the Kampala–Jinja highway. His capture came less than an hour after the entourage of the recently deposed President Milton Obote had crossed the same bridge en route to Kenya. He was immediately detained at Gaddafi Barracks.
Three years later, in June 1988, Rwakasisi was convicted and sentenced to death on five counts of kidnapping with intent to murder. He spent nearly two decades on death row in Luzira Prison, sharing the ordeal with former Central Province governor, Brig. Gen. Ali Fadhul.
In a dramatic turn of fate, Rwakasisi was released in 2009 and later appointed Presidential Advisor by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni—a man who, in the early 1970s, had once served under him as a research assistant when Rwakasisi headed the Legal and Political Affairs Desk in the Office of the President.
Rwakasisi’s story remains one of Uganda’s most striking tales of political power, downfall, survival, and eventual reintegration into government.
