KTN journalist
Joy Doreen Biira, who was arrested amid clashes in Kasese, is safe,
Ugandan police spokesman
Felix Kaweesi has said.
Biira, a Ugandan,
was arrested after giving an eye-witness account of the fighting that has left 55 people,
including 14 police officers,
dead.
She was apprehended alongside her Kenyan fiance and three friends
on Sunday and taken to
Central
police station in Kasese.
Kaweesi told
NBS television on Monday that
Biira was arrested for taking pictures.
"Police asked her about her motive for taking the pictures and why she did not abide by the law," he said.
"They had a concern... She had to tell them what she was doing."
Kaweesi
noted photography had not been prohibited but that operations require procedures that Biira may not have followed.
"I think she misbehaved. She might have accessed a cordoned-off area."
But he added that the journalist was safe and that he had asked officers to grant her police bond, as the "simple" matter had been addressed.
He had said Biira would have to record statements.
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Regarding the Kasese massacre, Kaweesi said
police acted with restraint against Charles Mumbere, the king of the Rwenzururu Kingdom.
He said day-long negotiations between police and Mumbere bore no fruits, as he did not comply, and that he
was arrested.
"Security operatives reacted professionally, with restraint and reasonable force," he said.
The spokesman said
a
senior
UPDF officer was attacked
with an improvised explosive device.
"I am yet to establish how many people died during a cross fire at the palace, but certainly it was not a cup of tea," he said.
Kaweesi noted that the attack was not on civilians but the government.
"An attack on security officers is not terrorism. Those people had rudimentary tools, not just simple machetes," he said.
"We are investigating how royal guards became a militia with access to weapons."
Biira, who had taken her fiancee for introduction, had posted a video of the burning palace on her Instagram account.
A post on her Facebook account, that was later deleted, read:
"It's so sad what I've witnessed today... Part of the palace of the kingdom I'm from, the Rwenzururu kingdom, burning down..."
Her friend Rosebell Kagumire wrote on Twitter:
"Family members said the military came to the home and demanded photos (Biira)
had taken of the attack on the palace."
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