KAMPALA — Lumumba Amin, son of Uganda’s notorious former dictator Idi Amin, has released a scathing video analysis of the alleged secret torture facility known as “Moses’s Basement” or “Muhoozi’s Basement,” questioning whether the current government has surpassed his father’s infamous reputation for brutality.
The Leaked Registry
In his video commentary, Lumumba Amin focuses on what he describes as a reportedly leaked registry from the facility, which he says has now been “shown to the public in all its splendor.” Entry number 40, he notes, lists the name Mabonga Habat Mad with an arrest date of May 19, 2026.
“This is the name of the UPDF officer who has reportedly written a public letter condemning the brutal torture chamber and the mistreatment of political opponents in that very Moses dungeon,” Amin says. He adds that the officer allegedly provided video evidence of political detainees inside the notorious facility.
Amin raises pointed questions about the officer’s detention: “I wonder why the UPDF detained this officer on that day in that facility. What did he do that led to that detention? And if this is not what ignited his desire to expose his tormentors…”
The Disappeared
The leaked registry, according to Amin, also includes veteran feminist politician Miriam [Matembe] and journalist and researcher Timothy [Kalyegira], whom Amin describes as “an old colleague of mine from the media days.”
“Checking online, I found that the dates in the registry correspond with the time the press announced the abductions and disappearance of these two personalities,” Amin says. “Therefore, as the country was worried about where individuals had disappeared, they had probably been immediately blindfolded and driven straight to the Moses torture chamber at breakneck speed.”
Challenging the Historical Narrative
Amin uses the video to challenge what he calls fabricated history surrounding his father’s regime. He insists the so-called “Amin torture chamber” at Lubiri in Mengo was never a detention facility at all.
“That facility which is actually an armory — a military armory for the military barracks, not any detention facility,” Amin states. “It was also an armory under the Tanzanian occupation forces in 1979, under discipline up to 1996, and also under [Museveni] rebels from the time they took power from the Tito Okello junta.”
Amin emphasizes that the Lubiri armory’s only historical significance is that soldiers broke into it on January 23, 1971, using an armored personnel carrier, taking weapons and subsequently seizing the barracks, the capital, and the entire country while President Milton Obote was in Singapore for the Commonwealth summit. “That is the actual history of that armory. It is where the [Amin] government started. But some people in Uganda know how to invent stories to eat from tourists’ money.”
A Dark Tourism Proposition
Amin proposes an ironic solution: “Yet today in 2026, here is a real Moses torture chamber. It can bring tourism money to the economy. So why hide it from tourists?”
He suggests that Western tourists and journalists should be allowed to visit the facility just as they are invited to visit the so-called Amin torture chamber. “I am sure the tourists walking in there will feel in the walls of the rooms all the trauma and pain of those that suffered untold brutality in there. And then tell other tourists abroad to visit Uganda and pass by the Moses torture chamber.”
The Bigger Question
Amin pivots to a more disturbing allegation, suggesting a possible link between the facility’s operatives and the 2017 Entebbe women murders, where countless women were found raped, murdered, and their bodies dumped around that same area.
“Who knows if the Moses torture chamber was not involved,” Amin says. “We never know what people who are drunk with power can do to women. There are those who even order the women to spread their legs at gunpoint. And the poor woman has no option but to oblige in fear and in tears.”
He concludes by highlighting the fundamental problem: “All sorts of lawlessness, indiscipline and abuse happen so easily in any place that nobody even knows existed and with no administrative public oversight to account for what is happening there and what it’s supposed to be doing.”
Amin’s final question lingers: “Who is the monster now?”
The UPDF has dismissed all allegations as fabricated. No independent investigation has been launched.