Man Charged for Using Modified Twitter Accounts of Top Govt Officials To Incite Public

Joint Security forces in Kampala have arrested a man behind fake propaganda  using twitter accounts with titles of top government officials and institutions.

The suspect Kasagga Bashir aka Kasagga Matovu, has been charged with four counts of of unauthorised modification of computer material under the Computer Misuse Act 2011.

This is after officials officials from the Criminal Investigations Directorate(CID) and Chieftancy of Military Intelligence(CMI) cracked down on him. He violated code sections14 (1) and (6) of the act by spreading hate and attacks toward government officials and institutions.

According to police Kasagga used twitter accounts of officials like that of Speaker of Parliament Anita Among @Anita Among, the Uganda People’s Defence Spokesperson Brig Felix Kulaigye @UPDFspokesperson, Balaam Barugahare Ateenyi @Balaam 1980 and Uganda Police Force @PoliceUga, to post messages inciting the public.

The Uganda Police spokesperson Fred Enanga told journalists that the suspect carried out his crimes between the months of August and September, 2022.

” With requisite intend and knowledge, used his social engineering skills/techniques to create, obtain and modify tweets and screenshots of the twitter handles.He then allegedly modified the codes to cause the sites to display a string of pictures and words that were offensive.” says Enanga

He says police have since retrieved a series of posts, charts, accounts and pictorials, shared with 6,588 followers on Twitter and 5,625 Facebook followers. Police have also recovered electronic gadgets used by Kassaga to originate fake posts on twitter.

Enanga says the Cyber Crime Unit at CID Headquarters, will continue to crackdown on such as well as methods of mitigating risks by pursuing perpetrators of cybercrime.

These are some of the tweets Kassaga shared

Kassaga faked tweets on the above accounts about the death of Gen Salim Saleh and inciting violence, indicating the death of Saleh saying ‘guys this time around celebrate responsibly, he has died’

From Uganda Police again, he wrote ” In light of instilling morals to this rotten generation that has made it a habit to jubilate when government officials die, we have arrested one tracy Manle an NUP supporter to serve as an example to the rest, the suspect posted a video celebrating the desath of Gen Elly Tumwine .

On behalf of the speaker Among Kassaga wrote; “It is with great happiness that I have received the death of Gen Elly Tumwine, I even told the pope that this deceased man tortured Ugandans. When I was still in the FDC, Gen Tumwine abducted Besigye’s supporters, it is good that he has died.