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Gen. Muhoozi Removes Katungi from PLU After U.S. Arms Trafficking Indictment
Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Chairman of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), has dismissed Michael Katungi Mpeirwe as the movement’s Commissioner for External Affairs and removed him from the Central Committee.
The announcement comes in the wake of a U.S. federal indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia, charging Katungi and three other foreign nationals — a Bulgarian, a Kenyan, and a Tanzanian in a major arms trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Muhoozi said the PLU’s foreign committees will now be appointed solely by the Chairman.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the four have been conspiring since September 2022 to supply Mexico’s violent drug cartel CJNG (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación) with military-grade weapons, including machineguns, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft systems, and explosives.
The CJNG, designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February 2025, is one of Mexico’s most dangerous transnational criminal groups. Court documents allege Katungi was part of an international procurement network that forged arms control documents to disguise the weapons’ true destination.
The indictment details a test shipment of 50 AK-47 rifles from Bulgaria using fraudulent end-user certificates, along with plans for further deliveries valued at over €53 million. One suspect, Bulgarian national Peter Dimitrov Mirchev, is accused of previously supplying arms to notorious Russian trafficker Viktor Bout.
Arrests have been made in Spain, Morocco, and Ghana, but Katungi remains at large. If convicted, the defendants face 10 years to life in U.S. federal prison.
The case, part of Operation Take Back America, was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with support from law enforcement in Greece, Ghana, Morocco, and Spain.
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