(New York City) A leading advocate for LGBT civil rights in Uganda was seized and badly beaten by police, international human rights groups allege.

Three men in police uniforms and a fourth in civilian attire put Mukwaaya in the patrol car. He was driven to a building where he was led through a dark hall to an interrogation room, and aggressively questioned about the Ugandan LGBT movement.

Mukwaaya was cut around the hands and tortured with a machine that applies extreme pressure to the body, preventing breathing and causing severe pain, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and Sexual Minorities Uganda .

Sexual Minorities Uganda – a coalition of 3 LGBTI organizations in Uganda – and representatives of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission searched unsuccessfully for Mukwaaya for nearly 24 hours, inquiring as to his whereabouts at five police stations in Kampala.

He surfaced the following day saying he had been driven from the building where he’d been held and dumped. 

Shaken and bruised, he said he boarded a motorbike taxi to the city center and telephoned colleagues from SMUG who found him weak, filthy and without shoes and some of his clothing.

Earlier this year Mukwaaya was detained while demonstrating for access by gay people to HIV services. 

“The abduction and torture of a Ugandan HIV and AIDS activist who faces trial for holding a peaceful protest reveals the danger to those who challenge the government’s policies,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

All three groups called on Ugandan authorities to “investigate the abduction and torture and sanction those responsible.”

“Uganda’s government promotes homophobia when it should be protecting its citizens against HIV and Aids,” said Scott Long, HRW’s director for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program.