The embattled driver attached to the Judiciary who threatened to crash a car in an audio clip that has since gone viral on social media over alleged poor salary has been charged with hate speech. 

The 46-year-old Stanely Kisambira, On Monday, May 22, appeared before Buganda Road Court Grade One Magistrate, Fidelis Otwao, who remanded him to Luzira Prison until June 2. 

“You are charged with one count of hate speech but because the trial magistrate is indisposed, you are remanded until June 2,” Otwao ruled.

The charge of hate speech is contrary to section 26A(1)(c) of the Computer Misuse Act, 2011, as amended by the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022. 

The prosecution alleges that Kisambira on May 12, 2023, within Uganda through a computer shared on the ‘Judiciary Transport’ WhatsApp group, information that was likely to promote hostility against judges. 

In the said audio, a man who the prosecution says is Kisambira, argues that the judge’s salaries are unfairly over and above those of their drivers and that a driver can decide to cause road accidents by ramming into a moving truck thereby by killing the judges and their bodyguards, a suggestion the prosecution says amounts to hate speech. 

Defence lawyers Derrick Bazekuketta, Stanley Oketcho and Isaac Ssemakadde argue that the charge threatens freedom of speech and they are ready to defend it. 

Oketcho also blamed the magistrate for remanding Kisambira without taking a plea, saying he should not have entertained it since he was not the trial magistrate. 

Kisambira has been on Police bond but when he appeared at Central Police Station in Kampala for the renewal of his bond, he was instead produced in court.