Kenyan journalists joined many other journalists in protest after the shocking discovery that a team of BBC journalists had been arrested in Kampala.However they have since been released on police bond.
New Vision reported on Friday that the journalists were ordered to appear at Central Police Station on February 18.
According to Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesman Mr Patrick Onyango, three journalists — Godfrey Badebye, Kassim Mohamad, and Rashid Kawesa — and their driver Shafiq Kisame were arrested in Makindye, a Kampala suburb, where they were allegedly buying classified drugs from an undercover security officer on Wednesday night. Mr Mohamad is a Kenyan.
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 Reporters 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.