Uganda charges Facebook, Twitter chiefs for ‘attempts to sabotage’ elections

JUBA – Ugandan authorities on Sunday issued arrest warrants for US tech giant executives, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, for allegedly interfering – without evidence – to sabotage the country’s elections, the Uganda media reports.

The East African county went into heavily contested elections on Thursday in a poll opposition leaders including prominent Bobi Wine say has been rigged after the election commission, which has in the past been criticized by the opposition of standing by Museveni, declared the country’s long-time ruler as winner.

Government spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, was quoted by the Kampala-based Daily Monitor as saying that a number of intelligent officers have been dispatched to Washington to discuss with US authorities extradition of Zuckerberg and Dorsey for the claims that they have undermined “Ugandan democracy”.

“Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, and Dorsey and his co-culprits Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone will answer for their separate attempts to sabotage our democratic process before the military court in Makindye,” the government spokesman claimed without giving evidence.

“Uganda is not America where a president’s account can be blocked and deleted and mobs attack the Capitol. Uganda is ours, it is not anybody’s. There is no way anybody can come and play around with our country, to decide who is good, who is bad, this one we will stop. We cannot accept that,” he said.