UGANDA’S opposition leader Bobi Wine said at the weekend that he fled the country after January’s presidential election because he feared for his life.

In an interview on the BBC’s Newshour programme, Mr Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, said: “It was clear that the regime wanted to eliminate me.”

The pop star-turned-politician repeated his claim that the presidential election was rigged in favour of the incumbent Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.

Mr Museveni reportedly won the election with 72 per cent of the vote.

Mr Wine told the BBC that President Museveni had tried “many times” to have him killed and that the president’s son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who heads Uganda’s military, had “made it clearer without any filters.”

General Kainerugaba went on social media threatening to castrate Mr Wine and had put out a bounty for his capture “dead or alive.” The messages have since been deleted from his social media account.

Mr Wine said his family had left “long before me” but he voiced fears for those in his party, the National Unity Platform, who had remained in Uganda.

The Ugandan authorities have not immediately commented on the interview