It’s now three days since the government withdrew charges of terrorism from the 25 terror suspects that were re-arrested and charged for the second time.Dr. Ismail Kalule was one of them.
A professional doctor and a specialist in treating chronic diseases using homeopathic medicine. Dr. Kalule had his life shuttered when he was declared a terrorist in the year 2010. He was rounded up with others and kept in Luzira prison the home of criminals for 8 years.
After the court gave him his freedom, NBS looked for him at his home at Kiwatule Kyadondo in Kiira Sub County. It is here that we found him trying to make good of what his children had missed for the last 8 years.
He told us that on the day he returned home, none of his children was able to recognize him because they were very young at the time he was arrested. "I was arrested when he was still very young at around 2 months old. And for almost 8 years, he never saw me again. And when I came back, they wondered especially the youngest one.
He wondered who this person was, who this guy was, where does he come from? They were asking their mum because the children did not even recognize me." Said, Dr. Ismail Kalule – Former Bomb Suspect.
As a former prisoner, Dr. Kalule shared with us his experience of 8 years which he said were not easy since he was not allowed to mix with other inmates. "Maybe the prison wardens think that we are poisonous to the other fellow inmates. So we were kept in a place known as the East Wing which is a prison within a prison.
" And when we asked him how he intended to make good of the lost time? This was his story. "To stay peacefully as a free person like other Ugandans, do my work as I used to do, do my business as I used to do but to keep peace in our country, to assist our fellow Ugandans and to pray for justice to prevail on each and every person."
Even though he was given bail several times, Kalule was re-arrested which increased fear in his life that even when he was told to go home, he was not sure it was for real. “I suspected that may we can be re-arrested simply because I saw a lot of civilian clothed security operatives outside the court and some of them I still recognize their faces because they are familiar to us all this period of time being released and re-arrested often times.
” A lot has happened since he was locked up but one painful experience was the loss of his father Hajji Sulaiman Kabega whom he never got the opportunity to bury. “The news of the death of my daddy really affected me, deeply, psychologically, mentally as well as physically simply because he was the breadwinner of my family; my wife, my children as well as even my mother.” While Dr. Kalule would be happy to be home, he is also sad that he cannot be compensated since the charges which were set on him were high profile nature.
