A team of BBC journalists who were arrested in Kampala have been released on police bond.
New Vision reported on Friday that the journalists were
ordered to appear at Central Police Station on February 18.
They are Godfrey Badebye, Kassim Mohamed, Rashid Kaweesa, and their driver Shafiq Kisame, all attached to BBC.
They were arrested Wednesday night together with Vivian Nakaliika, the wife of local journalist Solomon Sserwanja.
The Ugandan police arrested the team for illegal possession of prescription drugs.
But government spokesman Ofwono Opondo
said the reporters had been helping to expose corruption and demanded their immediate release.
Opondo told Reuters that the
journalists had been cooperating with the State House Health Monitoring Unit to investigate the theft and sale of
Ugandan government drugs in neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"I am yet to find out the logic why police arrested these journalists, who in my view were helping government to unearth the rot which is in the system," Opondo said.