Uganda ex-minister back from Britain to face graft case

KAMPALA, May 28 (Reuters) Ugandan police said a sacked health minister charged with stealing funds donated for children's vaccines would appear in court today after flying back from Britain and surrendering to authorities.

Jim Muhwezi, an influential former spy chief who was once a close ally of President Yoweri Museveni, was in London for medical treatment last week when a Kampala court accused him of abuse of office, causing financial loss and theft.

Ugandan police had vowed to have him arrested as a fugitive and extradited if he was not home by Wednesday. Muhwezi says he is the victim of a government smear campaign.

''He is back and is being questioned,'' Okoth Ochora, deputy director of the east African country's Criminal Investigations Department, told Reuters. ''He will be in court (today).'' Muhwezi's two former deputy ministers, Mike Mukula and Alex Kamugisha, were arrested last week on related charges along with one of Museveni's former secretaries, Alice Kaboyo.

They deny the allegations, which follow a government report this month implicating the four in two thefts netting 1.63 million dollars from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

The three men were fired last year over a separate graft scandal in 2005 that cost Uganda grants worth 367 million dollars from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Uganda had won international praise for sharply reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates through frank education campaigns.

But that has been undermined in recent years by scandals shocking locals and donors alike with lurid testimony of senior officials lining their pockets with money meant for medicines.

REUTERS NY RS1522