Uganda charges opposition lawyer Erias Lukwago with misprision of treason

Uganda’s security and court system has moved against one of the country’s best-known opposition lawyers, charging Erias Lukwago with misprision of treason and remanding him to Luzira Prison. Lukwago, a former Kampala lord mayor and senior opposition figure, is also a lead lawyer for detained opposition leader Kizza Besigye.

Lukwago was arrested at his home in Wakaliga, Kampala, on Monday, June 15, 2026, and brought before a magistrate’s court in Kampala on Wednesday, June 17. The court charged him with the treason-related offence and ordered him held until June 22, 2026. Misprision of treason refers to concealing knowledge of treason and failing to report it to authorities.

The case lands in the middle of the wider treason prosecution already facing Besigye and his aide, Obeid Lutale. Their trial began on Thursday, June 11, 2026, in the Criminal Division of the High Court in Kampala. For Lukwago, the charge does more than add another defendant to an already politically charged file. It pulls the legal defense itself into the reach of the state.

That is what makes the arrest so consequential. Lukwago is not only defending Besigye in the treason case. He also represents him in a separate case against Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, over repeated social-media threats directed at Besigye. Those threats have included allegations that Kainerugaba said Besigye should be hanged on Heroes’ Day.

Kainerugaba, who is President Yoweri Museveni’s son, has long been at the center of opposition criticism over his online attacks. In May 2025, he said he was holding a missing opposition official in his basement and threatened to castrate him, remarks that helped harden fears about the reach of military power and the limits of restraint inside Uganda’s security establishment.

Opposition parties and MPs condemned Lukwago’s arrest as state lawlessness and called for Parliament to be recalled from recess to debate shrinking civic space and the conduct of Uganda People’s Defence Forces officers. Human rights groups and opposition leaders have already described the treason case against Besigye as politically motivated. With Lukwago now facing the same system he has been challenging in court, the pressure appears to be moving from opposition leaders themselves to the legal machinery around them.