Court to rule on Buganda riot case next week

By Hillary Nsambu

Justice Ralph Ochan of the High Court Wednesday said he will give a ruling whether the 11 men on a charge of terrorism have a case to answer on Monday.

Justice Ochan who was set to give his ruling today (Wednesday) said he was still studying the evidence adduced before Court in the matter.

 This followed final submissions in which Senior Principal State Attorney, Vincent Wagona had asked the court to put all the 11 accused men on their defense, saying that the prosecution had made out a strong case against each of them and should be convicted as charged.

Wagona asked the court to ignore the small discrepancies in the prosecution evidence and consider the circumstances that prevailed at the time of the commission of the offence.

“Numerous incidences occurred at different times in different places and the police must have been overstretched, which caused the small inconsistencies in the prosecution evidence,” the attorney said.

However, the attorney conceded that the investigating officer had told a lie when he testified in court that three of the accused men had been convicted at Nsangi Magistrate’s Court before, which turned out to be untrue.   

However, earlier on Friday senior lawyer Apollo Makubuya, who is also Buganda’s Attorney General, and Medard Seggona-Kalyamaggwa, in their submissions, had asked the court to free all the accused men without putting them on their defense.

The argued that the prosecution had miserably failed to establish an offence that would warrant them to put up a defense against the charge. 

Initially, 25 men were indicted on allegations that they burnt down Nateete Police Station in 2009 during a massive uprising that engulfed the city of Kampala after the Katikkiro of Buganda, John Baptist Walusimbi, had been blocked from going to Kayunga in Buegerere county to prepare for the Kabaka’s visit in September 2009.

However, the DPP dropped the charge against the 14 men, saying he was no longer interested in proceeding with the charge against them and the court also freed them.