“PF police broke my t3st!cle, locked me in a mortuary”-PS Milner Mwanakampwe recounts 2017 torture ordeal

MWANAKAMPWE RECOUNTS 2017 TORTURE ORDEAL: “PF POLICE BROKE MY TESTICLE, LOCKED ME IN A MORTUARY ”

CENTRAL Province Permanent Secretary Milner Mwanakampwe has recounted the pain and torture he endured in 2017, when, as the then Youth Chairman for Central Province, he found himself caught in a politically charged moment.

This was during the period when President Hakainde Hichilema, then the main opposition leader, was arrested and detained at Mukobeko Maximum Prison on treason charges. Mwanakampwe’s experience under that tense political climate has now come to light as he recalls the difficult moments he lived through.

During a recent interview with Diggers Life, Mwanakampwe shared how he was tied upside down and tortured until one of his testicles was broken. He says that one of his testicles remains broken to this day, and the ordeal also left one of his ears completely impaired.

He narrated how he spent the night in the mortuary from midnight to 05:00 hours, with the doors locked and the lights off, swallowed by an oppressive darkness. He recalled rats scurrying across the cold floor and how every rustle made him flinch, as if the dead around him were coming back to life.

Mwanakampwe began his story by explaining that the ordeal started in March 2017 after he travelled with HH to Western Province for the Kuomboka Ceremony and then to Limulunga.

“Kuomboka, we are back from there, and as soon as we came back, we were on a road to Limulunga ourselves, with HH [and] his convoy. HH was vehicle number one, number two, number three. And then the President of the Republic of Zambia then, President Edgar Lungu, he was supposed to fly; he decides to drive, to follow his counterpart, to follow his friend, to follow his brother. Under normal circumstances, where there is a presidential motorcade coming, police are supposed to be stationed throughout that route, they call it routing. There was no routing, there was no policing there. We are there, and he comes and he overtakes us,” he recounts.

“And a week and two days, some few days later, they come, instead of sending a call-out, they come to break President Hichilema’s house. Every one of us who was there, including Honourable Nkombo, who came a little bit later, was badly beaten, badly beaten, and I’m saying badly beaten. In the morning, President Hichilema gives himself; he’s taken to prison. And back here in Kabwe, he is brought to Mukobeko. Now you should know, when he was brought to Mukobeko, I live in Kabwe, he is my president. I was the Provincial Youth Chairman for the province, meaning the coordination of visits, the coordination of where the wife and the family should sleep was in my hands, okay? That was in 2017″.

He recounts how, in early August, he was offered a ministerial position by the then PF government, along with two vehicles for his wife.

Mwanakampwe said he politely rejected the offer, telling them he would only accept if the President at the time, Edgar Lungu, first released his brother, Hakainde Hichilema, from prison.

“Earlier in or about August 4th, I received a gentleman from OP who tells me President Lungu wants to appoint you as Minister of Commerce. He comes home and he tells me we have bought two vehicles for your wife, and we will give you two vehicles. They are already in your name. Then I told them, with due respect, the best that I can do is go and tell His Excellency the President that I have accepted to be appointed, but the first thing that he should do is to release his brother from Mukobeko because he has not done anything, before then, he can forget. That was 4th,” he said.

“On 7th of August, I received three former ministers. Two of them are in jail now, some of them I will not mention names. Two of them are in jail. I received them, they come home unexpectedly and they tell me the President wants you to work with him, and you must defect today. And I tell them, I don’t defect, you tell the President that I already gave my position, that as long as his brother is in prison for an offence that he never committed, because he was not the driver of the vehicle, number one, number two, why hasn’t the driver of the first vehicle been arrested? Why hasn’t ’t the driver and the occupant of the second vehicle been arrested? You come for the third vehicle, the fourth vehicle had the Vice President of UPND then, Dr GBM. Why hasn’t he been picked? And you want me to work with people who are holding on to the President over a traffic offence? You can, with humility, go and tell him that I do not work like that. I may be starving, if you think I’m starving, but I would rather starve with dignity than go and eat with my conscience that is killing me. I would not do that”.

Mwanakampwe said on August 8, he was warned that President Lungu considered him to be “too cheeky”.

He added that later that same day, his Provincial Secretary warned him that police were looking for him and had been instructed to arrest him for a murder he knew nothing about.

“Then on the 8th, I received one of the directors from OP, and I’m told the President feels that you are too cheeky. And basically from there, then, I say, if I’m too cheeky, I’m sorry, because I’m stating nothing but the truth. Mr Hichilema has shaped me in terms of who I believe I should be. Now, to betray him at such kind of a critical and defining moment… The same day, there came a story that they wanted to go and paint a cell at Mukobeko where he was. I went there with the wife and the current Attorney General, I went there. And, yes, State Counsel Kabesha was using the law, but look, I am a youth chairman, and my president should be given a cell that has fresh paint, and I said no to this. If you do that, all of us you’ll lock, all of us here. Then in the evening, my provincial secretary then calls me and said I have a leakage for you. I’m told the policemen from C1, they call it C1, are looking for you, and they’ve been instructed to arrest you. What have I done? That you have killed someone? So, on a Thursday, they are supposed to come for me. I’m told I’ve killed someone. I don’t know who this person is,” he said.

“I go to Mukobeko to see the President. They knock me out. I didn’t see him that day. On a Saturday morning, the wife, myself, and the wife’s big sister, Aunty Beatrice, we go to Mukobeko, we see the boss. Then I tell the boss, boss, today I’ll be arrested, I have that feeling. There has been a chronology of issues, but I didn’t want to bore him. What was happening outside was we needed to provide leadership at that stage, when people were running away, when people were betraying him. We needed someone who would be firm and look up to God for prayers and provide strength to the family. And true to my word, in the morning we come from Mukobeko to a radio station, I had a programme. From there I drive to church with my son. Then I see people coming, I told myself let me be just strong. They get into church. In the midst of the sermon, I sat next to a very senior guy, a Commissioner General of one of the institutions. I see him walk out, back, then he tells me police are looking for you outside”.

He recalls that intelligence officers picked him up from church and accused him of being the last person to speak with a woman who had died.

“Now, I didn’t realise that the whole bench in front of me were intelligence police officers, and behind me, I’m slightly picked. I go outside, what have I done? I’m told, you’ll answer where you are going. They drove me to division headquarters and they showed me a number. Do you know this number? I said, I don’t know. I check in my phone, yes, you have been communicating with this lady, and you’re the last person to communicate with this lady, and she is dead, so you have to tell us who killed this lady. I said, oho my God, is that so? Then I asked them, now you know what, you have arrested me, my son has remained alone at church, he’ll be waiting, please take me back to church. I tell my son to walk back home. We got back to church, they were dispersing. I tell my son I have been arrested. He said, so they want to kill you, they want to kill President HH. This is a 5-year-old boy, and he told them, as long as God lives, 5 years old, you’ll never find peace,” he recounts.

“So, I said, are you going to allow me to pray? One of them asked me, you pray to who? And they sent me to the vehicle and we drive. One of the gentlemen, who was, I think, a bit kind to me, I discovered I wasn’t being arrested by police officers, I discovered it was Zambia Army, I discovered it was Zambia National Service, I discovered it was ZAF, and one gentleman from police intelligence. So this General, General Phiri to be precise, says, ‘imwe musiyeni apempele.’ (Let him pray).

I prayed that God have it your own way. If my time to go has come, allow us to go, but you’re God and you still remain God. And we drove. So when we reached Ulemu, that’s when I knew the giganticness of the matter, the number of vehicles I found waiting for me. So we drove all the way into Lusaka. The current First Lady contacted the lawyers quickly, Hon Jack Mwiimbu, Mulambo Haimbe, Martha Mushipe, Gilbert Phiri and Keith Mweemba. All of them went to Central Police”.

Mwanakampwe further recounts being blindfolded, beaten and electrocuted in a mortuary.

“Before I knew it, they diverted me from Central Police, locked me at Kabwata. Midnight they came for me and blindfolded me, and they started driving me the whole way, wherever they were taking me, maybe for two hours. Then finally they stopped and we started going down, and a gentleman called Col. Simukoko asked me, ‘Now, you’re in the world of the dead.’ I realised we were in a mortuary. No, I wasn’t blindfolded; they had untied me by that stage. I realised I was in a mortuary. They told me we’re pulling down the fridges of the dead bodies, and they told me if you don’t tell us about HH, where his money comes from, the farms that you promised people in Lusaka West, you met these people at this hotel which is at Levy at Stay Easy to be precise, you and Chief Mukuni and Chief Hamusonde, you met people there, you paid them and you bought them farms in Lusaka West, so you have to tell us. So now I asked them, ‘How can you speak to me like that? I have not been to Stay Easy in a very long time.’ Then I’m told, ‘No, no, no, you met at Stay Easy,’” he narrated.

“So now the beating at that stage had become merciless. I was bleeding from both the nose and the ears. At one stage I don’t remember whether I had fainted, I don’t remember, but I could still hear the other one saying, ‘Gentlemen, this is not the way to treat a fellow human being.’ Then the gentleman called General Phiri, I suspect he was innocent because he kept on urging with them. Now at that stage they got those things they use which they put in your ears and it has electricity; it was electrocuting me. They tell me if you’re not ready to talk, we’re leaving you up here in the mortuary,’ and they locked me up in there and they left me in there. I suspect, it could have been 01, 02 hours; they switched off the lights, everything is off, and off they went. I shook, i prayed”.

Mwanakampwe said he was so terrified that he prayed to God to take his life.

“There are a lot of rats in that mortuary; every time you hear a rat passing you think there is a resurrection. If there was a time I asked God to kill me, it was that time. They pulled the fridges; there are trays there [mortuary], they pushed those trays out. Remember, there are rats. I was very scared. I used to think I was a strong guy, but I shook, I literally could feel myself shaking the hell out of myself. But then I said a prayer to God: God, I’ve asked you to kill me. If you don’t kill me now, then this won’t kill me, it’ll pass, and take care of my children, because you know how to take care of orphans. At that stage I was ready for anything, and I said, if dead bodies eat, let them swallow me now. But I realised I was talking to things, I was the only living thing there with rats. Yes, they removed the dead bodies and said, ‘You’re joining these if you don’t tell us the truth.’ So you have to tell us where HH’s funding comes from. Why is it that a gentleman called Obasanjo is coming, and at that time Madam Scotland had come the second time into Kabwe. Now, in their thinking, they thought money for funding comes through my account. They searched all my three accounts, the only money they found was K27,000, that was the cash in my lodge account, K27,000,” he recounts.

“They pushed me, you have to tell us to say HH is the one who gave you money which you bought the farms for soldiers in order to kill President Edgar Lungu, it’s HH who gave you money in order to kill Stephen Kampyongo, it’s HH who gave you money in order to kill President Rupiah Banda. I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. So what do you want me to say? You want me to implicate a man who has never sent me to do such a thing? No. That you, you should say HH, Chief Mukuni, are the ones who gave me money to hire soldiers to kill President Edgar Lungu.’ I said, ‘You guys, you know what, put those words in my mouth. If I will be able to produce them on your behalf, you’ll be very lucky, but from my mouth, I’ve shut my mouth. I’ll die if you’re willing to kill me now.’ Because at that stage I asked God, ‘Take care of my children, I’m ready to meet you. Please God, you have delayed to kill me.’ Then I told that gentleman, Col. Simukoko, ‘You’re having a pistol there, you’re delaying to pull the trigger.’ I was beaten mercilessly”.

Mwanakampwe says that from there, he was taken blindfolded to meet president Edgar Lungu.

“In the morning, around 05:00 hours, a different team came, blindfolded me, and guess where they took me, to President Edgar Lungu. He asked me, in Bemba, that the men I sent didn’t tell me that I’m supposed to work with government. I’ll use his exact words: ‘Ulyakapala aba ku Mukobeko takafume, and we cannot allow him to be president, so iwe the best you should do is work with us, and nabakweba ifya ku landa balumendo (The man at Mukobeko will not be released. The best you should do is work with us. The gentlemen have told you what to say). One, he is the one who sent you, he is the one who gave you money. We shall buy you two houses in South Africa if you feel like you’re not comfortable here, we’ll give you everything.’ And surprise, surprise, the names of the most critical family members, they have them, ‘this one, this one, we shall take care of them if they are a burden,’” he recalled.

“I said to President Edgar Lungu, ‘You can kill me because I’ve not done anything wrong. If you want me to work with you, the best you can do is release your brother, because from the bottom of your heart you know your brother is innocent. The only crime he has committed is to compete for presidency in his home country. If you say that is a crime, or maybe it’s a crime, I’m ready to die for it.’ Then he said, ‘Get this dirty out of my face,’ and I’m blindfolded again as a ‘dirty.’ Then I told him, ‘Mr President, you should have been a bit kind to yourself. Did your people tell you that I’m coming from the mortuary? Because as a president, I should not have come from the mortuary straight to meet a king like yourself. You should have allowed me to take a bath’”.

Mwanakampwe says he was later taken to a garage behind police headquarters, where he was tortured and one of his testicles was broken.

“And I’m blindfolded, taken again to a place that I discovered was a garage kind of thing. That was when they took me back the second day; I think it’s located behind Police Service Headquarters, a garage kind of place. There is even a boardroom. I’m taken into that boardroom, then I’m told, ‘Here where you have come, your friends have made confessions already.’ There I find a panel of more than, I think, 20 guys, and I’m told, ‘All your friends have confessed everything, you have to confess.’ Then I asked, ‘What am I confessing?’ and these guys tell me, ‘No, the soldiers that you wanted to kill Edgar Lungu with have confessed that you’re the one who gave them money, it came from President Hakainde Hichilema and Chief Mukuni.

Even Chief Mukuni, we have nabbed him, and he has confessed.’ So I said, ‘That’s okay, if he has confessed, tell him that he is my father, I respect him, but I think what he is talking about maybe he is dreaming.’ Now they tie me upside down, hands in between, they tie you and they put some things on my testicles. One of my testicles was broken by PF police, to date, they broke [one of] my testicles. I’m a bit emotional, but that’s the price of leadership when you give leaders who have to survive by crook. After that, I fainted. They waited, they poured water, and they started beating again,” recalled Mwanakampwe.

“Then they told me, ‘We will stop beating you as soon as you accept to write.’ They write a statement for me, then they say, ‘All we want is a signature here.’ So I say, ‘These hands, you can break them and then use them, I’ll never sign anything.’ Imagine my lawyers are looking for me, they’ve hidden me in that garage and mercilessly tortured me. Then, ultimately, they bring this soldier, who I came to learn was Staff Sergeant Phiri. At that stage, he had also been resuscitated as well. They bring him and they tell him, ‘You, this one had accepted he gave you money.’ So Phiri says, ‘Is that so?

You’re very fair, let him tell you where he gave you money from.’ At that stage I told them, ‘I think you know what, you’re men of the law, but the instructions that you’re carrying here are all illegal.’ Again, that Sergeant was mercilessly beaten, he started hallucinating, and they rushed him to a hospital… Me, I have one ear to date that has completely been impaired. After that torture, they took me to Maina Soko to be stabilised, but look, I’m bleeding from the private parts, I’m bleeding from the ears…”.

After more than three months in jail and several court appearances, he was granted a nolle prosequi.

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