Published on 26th December 2014 http://ugandaradionetwork.com/a/story.php?

s=69870
A three month investigation shows how covertly Uganda has been receiving Israeli refugees
and taking arms in return to keeping them here or transiting them to their home country. Despite
numerous government denials, tickets, photos and videos of Israeli refugees expose the grim
nature in which the deportations are carried out and accepted by Uganda
When the accusation was first drawn that the Ugandan government was taking Israeli refugees in
exchange for arms, government officials were quick to deny the allegations.
Foreign affairs ministry officials, on top of denying the allegation said the deportations from Israel
would be in contravention of established International law practices that Uganda ascribes to. But the
allegation held and probably might now be true.A few months after denying the allegation, Israeli
government officials would shift their pronouncements from the non-existence of the deal to the
deal is not completely unfounded. Haaretz, a leading agency in Israel quoted the Israeli Interior
minister Gideon Saar, in September last year, saying the deal for the transfer of refuges from Israel
to Uganda is not completely unfounded.

But while the Israeli government officials shifted goal posts on the matter, the government back in
Kampala stayed firm, assuring the press from month to month that the government wasnt taking
any refugees from Israel.

While the government denied the allegations, they didnt deny that Israel had approached them to
act as a transit country for refugees. Infact, Foreign Affairs minister Okello Oryem in an interview
with the EastAfrican newspaper would pronounce that indeed Uganda had been approached to host
unwanted refugees of Eritrean and Sudanese origin

I set out to verify the allegation if indeed the Ugandan government had received refugees from Israel
and whether arms were exchanged in the process.

The story of Israels approach to Uganda on the matter is traceable to the long held friendships of
the Israel government with Uganda. What perhaps was the start of the conversation on the matter
was President Yoweri Kaguta Musevenis visit to Israel in 2011.
The visit, was the second of its kind the president was making to Israel and travelled on private
planes to get there. While in Israel, Museveni would talk to Benjamin Netanyahu on agricultural
relations and in part military aid.

Present in that room that day was a man not new to Musevenis eyes, Rafi Eitan. Having served in
the Israeli airforce, Eitan had been elected Director of Israels top spy agency Mossad from where he

left to become minister of Pension Affairs of Israel, it was from this post that he left Israels civil
service to do private business in Agriculture. Those who know him, sing praise of his intelligence
gathering and dissemination. Eitan retired to a private life in business and agriculture, his preference
being starting a cattle ranch in Uganda, a trade Museveni leaves no stone unturned when explaining.
Eitan would become a close associate of Museveni, often advising him on handling terror and in
return, his business interests would come to fruition in Uganda.

A source who worked in statehouse at the time says every time he visited, he was highly guarded
and given first priority, they describe him as a friendly old man that speaks less and is a stickler for
order.

The details of that meeting may never become public but the outcome certainly became. A gag
order lifted by the Israeli court in August this year proved that Uganda had agreed to a deal to take
in over 5,000 Sudanese and Ethiopian refugees in exchange for arms and agricultural support.

Uganda indeed had the atmosphere for the refugee settlement, the country was swarming with
refugees to a tune of 220,555 according to data from the UNHCR, at the time, Museveni was in dire
need of arms to deal with emerging threats of Al-shabab that Uganda had started fighting 2 years
before then. Museveni also needed rather too strongly strong agricultural ties to sustain the
national economy that was on skewers. Israel was willing to offer this and more. Arms, agricultural
inputs, training for soldiers in Israels prestigious military and even Israel backing in missions against
LRA and Al-Shabab.

So did the refugees come?

That question cannot be better answered by anybody other than Nesredin Jemal Hasen, an Ethipion
national stuck in Uganda. Jemal, fled fighting in his home country in Ethiopia and docked in Israel
where he was given temporary asylum pending refugee status in 2009. He was assured by Israeli
officials that upon processing of his documents, he would be granted refugee status however all that
was about to change in 2014.

Jemal recalls receiving a phone call from a company named Inbal Insurance agency that informed
him that he had booked a flight aboard Ethiopian airlines to fly out of Israel destined for Uganda on
the 2nd of June. To the best of his knowledge, Jemal, an asylum then, did not have money to book a
flight ticket but he was informed that the ticket had been cashed in by the insurance company and
all that was required of him was to be at the airport on the said date to take his flight back home.
Jemal pleaded to remain in Israel but that plea would bear no fruit. On the 2nd of June 2014,

following orders he had been given, he went to the airport and was reffered to a man he fondly
recalls introducing himself as Amadeus. Amadeus was the name that had booked the tickets for
Jemal and would later hand Jemal $3500 to fly safely to Uganda, it was then that Jemal realised he
had formally accepted to be deported from Israel.

We traced the origins of the tickets and booking numbers on Jemals tickets and all of them led to an
agent 0403 working at Inbal Insurance agency in Israel. Inbal, is a state owned insurance company
that handles among many Israeli matters, insuring arms deals. Inbal had incurred a cost of 2 million
shillings (USD 800) to book a ticket and flight for Jemal aboard Ethiopian airlines, seat number 17 D
on the 2nd of June 2014. Jemals story checked. Addis Ababa airport had received a person in his
names on the date he had given me and that person had proceeded on a private plane to Entebbe
airport in Uganda. Jemal now lives in Kampala. He refused to disclose his location citing fear of
reprisals after the story was published.
A booking ticket issued by the Israeli national Insurance company deporting a refugee from the
country to Uganda

A booking ticket issued by the Israeli national Insurance company deporting a refugee from the
country to Uganda
After meeting Jemal, I was convinced there was atleast, a semblance of truth in the allegation and so
I went searching for more like him. In September this year, another of Jemals kind came my way, his
name, Barahawi Fransa.Fransa, like Jemal, is an Ethiopian who had fled to Israel to live a good life.
He explains in amharic that he had left Ethiopia after conditions of living got worse and
untenable. He arrived in Israel in 2008 and has documents with him to prove that he was granted
refugee status. However, in typical Jemal fashion, he was also called by agent 0403 and told that he
had been booked a flight to Uganda destined to leave on the 12th of June 2014. An email which
URN has seen followed the phone-call together with an air ticket and a booking reference alluding
to Amadeus. Fransa was flown out of Israel from Tel Aviv airport to Addis Ababa before ending up
in Uganda.

The email address provided by the said Amadeus on the tickets that were booked for both Jemal
and Fransa when mailed returned an automated response saying there is no such user.
Dr Rami Gudovitch, a known activist on Israeli refugees describes the process of transferring
refugees as shopping and he says the matter could even be bigger. He says that the refugees are
being arrested in the countries they are being sent to and Uganda is certainly one of them.

I sent the details of Fransa and Jemal to the Commissioner for refugees at the Office of the Prime
Minister Apollo David Kazungu, to date, no response has been provided. Various requests for an

interview on the matter have been turned down but he is quoted telling Associated Press that he is
not privy to any deal for the exchange of refugees between Israel and Uganda.

To the arms deal

In 2009, Uganda needed arms the most, UPDF had just undertaken Operation Lightening thunder
to flash LRA rebels out of Ugandan territory and needed more supplies, at the time, documents from
parliaments defence committee seen by URN confirm that indeed a request by UPDF was put in for
an extra 47 billion to fund operations in Garamba. Infact, a closer look at the spending patterns of
UPDF from that year indicate that an extra 95 billion shillings was put in for the defence budget.
When we traced the hansard for this discussion, the deputy Chief of Defence Forces then, Ivan
Koreta had explained that the year had been a hectic one for security and they needed the
money.

The year following however, the ministry of defence budget was cut by over 55 billion shillings and
in the same year, Israel reported to the United Nations Convention on Arms that they had sold
weapons (eighteen 120mm mortars and 3 truck mounted weapon systems) , a sale that would have
cost the UPDF four national budgets to put to bed. One 120mm mortar bought from Israel costs 1.3
trillion shillings according to the Japanese military expenditure list. Japan had bought the same guns
a year before. The major point is that Uganda government could not have afforded the weapons
that Israel sold to them over the course of three years. The coincidental nature in which arms kept
moving from Israel to Uganda following Musevenis meeting with Netanyahu and former Mossad
director Rafi Eitan would come into question. Eitans history with handling of refugees did not help
the accusation either. During his tenure as Senior Affairs minister, Eitan had suggested that the
Israeli government forcibly evict Jewish refugees that had settled in the country.

The covert nature of arms sales in Uganda made it impossible to track any paper work on this deal.
Col. Felix Kulaigye, a spokesperson of UPDF at the time when asked about the arms purchase
declined to comment saying it would be tantamount to breaching national security. Documents of
accountability from the Ministry of defence on the arms purchase in the following financial year
2010/2011 do not reflect any deal to that amount, infact, the entire national budget would have to
be taken to fund it.

An incident happening in November this year has however blown off the lid of what may have been
detained them at Special Investigations Unit over illegal arms importation. The Israeli officials
identified as Dotan Regev and Asaf Ben Israel were arrested at Entebbe Airport over illegal
importation of arms .

The two would be produced in court four days later from where they denied the charges and
launched a counter claim stating that the Uganda government was the one importing the guns from
the Israeli government and they are simply the go-between under their company Israeli weapons
Industries (IWI). A string of documents following this claim has bought to light what may have been
an arms deal. Rossette Byengoma, the Permanent secretary authored the first letter on January 29th
this year stating that the UPDF was to be an end user of weapons being carried by the two Israeli
officials. This in effect committed the UPDF to the deal.

The documents available suggest a government to government deal for the weapons however no
track record of documents shows payment for the same by the UPDF.

Refugees like Jemal and Barahawi continue to question circumstances under which they ended up in
Uganda but Ugandan government officials are neither willing to tell nor ready to divulge any details
on the matter.
While loads of evidence suggest that over 150 refugees have undergone the same process Jemal and
Barahawi underwent, the government in Kampala continues to vehemently deny these
allegations.For the entire time of the investigation, I mailed the Israeli government spokesperson but
my mails went unresponded to, the army in Uganda refused to comment on any arms dealings they
have with Israel, the UNHCR, the international body charged with the protection of refugees says
they have no information whatsoever of the existence of Israeli refugees in Uganda or any deportees
for that matter.
Jemal and Barahawi have since met in Kampala and are planning on travelling to their home country
in Ethiopia but lack passports and citizenship that was stripped off them after they fled their home
country.