A Ugandan novelist, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, has been arrested again just hours after being released on bail by a judge.
Plain-clothed men kidnapped the author as soon as he stepped out of prison, loaded him into a vehicle with no registration number plates, and sped away, according to his lawyer, Eron Kiiza.
From prison, the author appeared in court by video link.
After posting harsh statements about the president and his son on Twitter, Mr. Rukirabashaija was arrested in December and charged with two charges of “offensive communication.”
He has entered a not-guilty plea.
Rukirabashaija’s most popular works are the Greedy Barbarian, a novel in satire that notes the high-level corruption in a fictional country, and Banana Republic: Where Writing is seen as treasonous, a remembrance of his torture while incarcerated in 2020.
Last year, he received the Pen Pinter Prize for Courageous International Writing.