Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye is in intensive care in hospital, his wife and medical sources said on Thursday, as the UN blasted a wider crackdown on dissent. Besigye, 70, has been in custody and facing treason charges over an alleged plot against veteran President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.
At a court appearance on Wednesday, Besigye rejected state-appointed lawyers. He was expressing anger at his own representatives being refused when he collapsed. His wife Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, wrote on X: "He has been admitted to the ICU at Mulago Hospital (in Kampala).
"He is unconscious, unable to speak, and unresponsive even to a pain stimulus." A spokeswoman for the hospital, Gladys Baligonzaki Kajura, confirmed to AFP that Besigye had been admitted. "He is at the intensive care unit. He was admitted last evening and his condition is being managed," she added, without elaborating.
A medical source said, under condition of anonymity, that Besigye was taken to hospital on Wednesday evening and said he was in a "critical condition and unresponsive". Besigye, a former personal physician to Museveni, has been in the government's crosshairs since he joined the opposition more than 25 years ago.
