Updated by Faith Barbara Namagembe at 2142 EAT on Sunday 5th March 2023.

Security and Mulago hospital City Mortuary have finally released to the family the body of former National Unity Platform (NUP) lead lawyer Anthony Wameli.

Wameli passed away last month in the US where he had been hospitalised since September 2021 after being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

His body was returned to the country on Friday afternoon but the government took charge of proceedings, demanding that as a routine procedure for all returning bodies, a postmortem had to be conducted on Wameli.

The body was then taken to Mulago hospital where security was heavily deployed at the mortuary entrance – all the way to Kubbiri roundabout near pastor Samuel Kakande’s church.

This area usually doesn’t have security deployed, and even at the entrance of the mortuary, there are usually only two or three private security guards. But on Saturday, more than 20 ordinary police and field force unit officers were deployed.

After the postmortem, the body was taken to a funeral home in Mengo for final dressing from where it was taken to a church he confounded in Kanyanya. However, the earlier intended stage of paying respects to his body at the NUP headquarters has been struck off the burial programme. 

Kampala Metropolitan police spokesperson Patrick Onyango said the deployment was intended to ensure that there is no interference in the handling of the body of Wameli. Onyango added that police wanted to ensure that there is no chaos by NUP supporters which would have affected traffic flow in the area.

Wameli will be buried in his home district in Namisindwa, eastern Uganda. He died aged 44 having been born on 29 August 1978. He has the head of the legal team of the NUP and also attempted at joining active politics during the recently concluded elections of 2021 when he contested for the position of MP for Bubulo East.  He was also a human rights lawyer under his company of Wameli & Co, Advocates.