Boniface Mwangi, Agather Atuhaire detail their ordeal after arrest in Tanzania

Journalists and human rights activists Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire have recounted their ordeal after being arrested in Tanzania last month when the attempted to attend the treason trial of opposition leader Tundu Lissu.

Atuhaire disclosed how the Tanzanian police officers stripped her of all clothes save for her underwear and beat her upon arrest from a Dar es Salaam hotel.

“They removed all my clothes and left me in my underwear. They beat me.Then I was taken to a clinic, and they inserted stuff into me,” she told journalists during a joint press conference with Mwangi, adding that she was also subjected to sexual abuse.

After the beatings, she said they then administered painkillers as the officers begun to get concerned over the severity of the injuries they had inflicted on her.

“They kept checking on me. I think they started to panic that I might not leave in a physically stable condition. They had to make sure I walked out looking like a human being,” she said.

“They kept giving me painkillers. They almost overdosed me,” Atuhaire added.

She, however, said the officers did not rape her despite inserting objects into her private parts.

“At least I wouldn’t have to deal with HIV or other diseases. But the scars, both emotional and physical, remained,” she said.

“I couldn’t walk for three days. I couldn’t step down. The feet were so swollen have you ever felt your skin become so tight that you think if you stepped on something, it would prick or burst? That’s how the soles of my feet felt,” Atuhaire added.

On his part, Mwangi said: We were abducted in Tanzania by Tanzanian security forces, and we were tortured. They told me to strip naked. When I did, I was grabbed by four men, lifted so fast. When they lifted me, they tied me upside down, put lubricant in my rectum and started inserting objects in my backside.”

He added: “I said I can’t leave my hotel room at that hour. At 3:30 am, a lawyer appeared claiming the men were police officers. Still, I refused and barricaded myself inside until morning.”

Later, as he prepared to check out, Mwangi asked Atuhaire to assist with his luggage. Upon going downstairs, he was ambushed by a larger group of the same men.

“I screamed throughout the hotel and ran to my colleagues. The men followed me and insisted they only wanted to question me,” Mwangi said.

The two were released after being held incommunicado for three days before being deported following protests in both Kenya and Uganda.

Mwangi was left at the Horohoro border crossing while Atuhaire was dumped at the Mutukula border with Uganda.

However, he revealed that though Kenya’s Ambassador to Tanzania Isaac Njenga had informed him that he would be deported at 6.30 pm, a government official stopped the process and instead started beating him in front of Atuhaire and three Tanzanian lawyers who had sought to resolve the issue.

“Shortly after, a man claiming to be from the state office began beating me in front of the lawyers and Agather. He called me an enemy of the state and said they would teach me a lesson,” Mwangi said.