Uganda using torture to deter opposition -report

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26500212.htm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/images/20030712_uganda2-515h.html

President George W. Bush meets with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda Friday, July 11, 2003 in Entebbe, Uganda. White House photo by Paul Morse.

NAIROBI, March 29 (Reuters) - Ugandan security forces are increasingly torturing suspected opponents of President Yoweri Museveni, with reports of detainees beaten or threatened with poisonous snakes, an international rights group said on Monday.

The government dismissed a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch as "rubbish" born of a "fevered imagination".

Human Rights Watch said the use of torture by security forces, also including beatings with sticks studded with nails and jabbing with hypodermic needles, had increased since 2001.

"Uganda set up a shadow sector of security operations to contend with armed rebel groups and crime waves," Jemera Rone, a Human Rights Watch researcher, said in a statement.

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