Two months after he was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Dr Mathew Kirabo, still maintains he is innocent.

On November 21, 2023, Kirabo, who had spent over 15 months on the run after being convicted of murdering his 19-year-old girlfriend, Desire Mirembe, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Kirabo is now appealing against his conviction and sentence at the Court of Appeal.

Justifying his sentence, Mukono High Court judge Henry Kaweesa Isabirye said Kirabo appeared not to be repentant ever since he organised a wedding ceremony to tie the knot with another woman and disappeared.

The judge convicted Kirabo, ruling that he masterminded the murder of Mirembe.

“The commission of the offence was premeditated as stated by the witnesses who testified in court,” Kaweesa noted.

Prosecution narrated that after a misunderstanding, the doctor sedated Kirabo and killed her in Lugazi, Buikwe district, dumping her body in a sugarcane plantation on July 10, 2015.

Mirembe, a student at Makerere University medical school at the time, went missing in July 2015 shortly after she left her hostel to go and meet her boyfriend, Kirabo. Her body was later recovered in a sugarcane plantation in Jinja.

Detectives later arrested Kirabo, who confessed to the murder and took them to the scene of the crime and reconstructed the murder scene. Kirabo also indicated how he had strangled her and also slit her throat using a surgical blade.

He was charged at the Jinja Magistrates’ Court with murder and remanded but later granted bail on November 24, 2016.

The case was moved to Mukono High Court, which had jurisdiction over it, after the State attorney in Jinja complained that they did not have the locus to continue prosecuting it.

In May 2021, there was an uproar after the suspect, Kirabo, applied to court to get back his passport so that he could fly to the US for further studies.

Following the intervention of the former State House Anti-Corruption Unit head, Col. Edith Nakalema, the bereaved family met the Principal Judge, Justice Dr Flavian Zeija, who promised to ensure the matter was heard within the shortest time possible.

Recorded confession

The trial resumed in October 2021 and Kirabo’s recorded confession video detailing how he killed Mirembe by slitting her throat was played in court, leaving everyone in tears.

In the video, Kirabo demonstrated how he killed Mirembe and dragged her body into the sugarcane plantation, which is the same point where police recovered the body.

In the same video, he narrated to detectives that the spot of the throat he cut had two blood vessels — one vessel carried blood and another oxygen and he clearly said that once cut, a person could not survive for more than two minutes.

A pathologist attached to Mulago Hospital clearly explained in court that the person who killed Mirembe had a medical background based on the way he slit her throat.

Fake COVID results

When the Police produced the final witnesses, Kirabo did not appear in court.

His lawyers presented fake COVID-19 results to the judge, indicating that their client had contracted the virus and was admitted to Jinja Hospital.

They requested an adjournment for another 25 days, which the judge rejected and immediately cancelled his bail. However, photos would later emerge of Kirabo being introduced by his new girlfriend, a US citizen.

The medical personnel who forged the lab results which indicated that Kirabo was sick, having been infected with Covid-19 from Jinja, was arrested and remanded.

On November 3, 2021, Judge Kaweesa issued an arrest warrant for Kirabo and asked Police to present him in court “as soon as possible”.

Kirabo failed to turn up, prompting the Judge to order his sureties to produce him or pay the fine.

On November 17, 2021, the sureties — Imelda Wabulembo, Bernard Mbayo and Elizabeth Baleke — told the court that they did not know the whereabouts of Kirabo.

Justice Kaweesa said the sureties were given adequate time to produce the suspect in court. He ordered that each of the sureties pay shillings 50 million or be arrested for aiding the escape of a suspect. They later paid the sh150m amount.

However, Kirabo’s luck ran out on September 12, 2023, after he was tracked down to a hotel in Nairobi despite the fact that he had changed his name and facial features.