Kagezi murder case: Agasirwe applies for bail

KAMPALA - Senior Superintendent of Police Nickson Agasirwe, who is accused of the murder of Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Joan Kagezi, has applied for bail.

Agasirwe says he was arrested and charged with murder contrary to sections 171 and 172 of the Penal Code Act on June 16, 2025, at Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court and remanded to Luzira Maximum Security Prison, where he is currently detained.

The applicant says he was committed for trial on December 17, 2025, by Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court.

“By the time I was committed to the High Court for trial, I had spent more than 180 days on remand at Luzira Prison,” he contends.

Agasirwe states that the prolonged and indefinite period of detention violates his constitutional rights to a free and fair trial and presumption of innocence.

According to him, he has a fixed place of abode, substantial sureties to guarantee his attendance in court whenever he is required for trial. 

“It is only fair, just that the court should exercise its discretion to grant me bail,” he said.
Agasirwe is battling charges of murder alongside the former Flying Squad Unit operative Abdul Noor Ssemujju, alias Minaana. The offence attracts a maximum sentence of death, on conviction.

Kagezi was shot dead at about 7:15pm on March 30, 2015, in Kiwatule, a Kampala suburb, as she drove home with her children.

The case

Agasirwe, who is also the former commander of the disbanded Special Operations Unit and Minaana, who describes himself as a peasant, are battling charges of murder. The offence of murder attracts a maximum sentence of death upon conviction.

Kagezi was shot dead at about 7:15pm on March 30, 2015, in Kiwatule, a Kampala suburb, as she drove home with her children.

It is alleged that Agasirwe, Minaana and others, still at large on March 30, 2015, at Kiwatule in Nakawa Division, with malice aforethought, caused the death of Kagezi.

Agasirwe, Minana’s arrest

Agasirwe was arrested on May 21, last year, after a convicted former Uganda Peoples Defence Forces soldier, Daniel Kiwanuka Kisekka, told the court that a senior government official named “Nixon” allegedly financed Kagezi’s murder.

The 43-year-old Kisekka was handed a 35-year prison term by the International Crimes Division of the High Court in Kampala upon his plea of guilty in the murder of Kagezi.

However, John Kibuuka aka Musa, John Massajjage aka Mubiru Brian and Nasur Abdallah Mugonole, who are on remand in Luzira Prison, have since denied killing Kagezi. They are on trial before a panel of four judges led by Michael Elubu.

Meanwhile, Minaana, who was arrested in 2017 over the Kagezi murder and later released, was picked up on June 24, last year, by Criminal Investigations Directorate detectives from his home in Galilaya, Kayunga district.

At the time of Kagezi’s killing, Minaana, who joined the Police in an unstructured setting in 2007, was a field operative with the flying squad, and he then worked closely with Agasirwe.

Investigators also discovered that Minaana operated a garage just 600 metres from the crime scene, which sources now allege may have served as a surveillance or planning point.

Earlier investigations carried out jointly by the then Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, now rebranded as Defence Intelligence and Security, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard flagged the suspicious presence of several known police operatives at the murder scene on the night Kagezi was killed.