Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s court has ordered the Uganda Prisons Services (UPS) to physically produce incarcerated Kawempe North MP Muhammad Ssegirinya in court for his trial.
The order was issued by chief magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu after a poor internet connection from Kigo prison disrupted the hearing of a case in which Ssegirinya is charged with inciting violence.
For this particular case, Ssegirinya was arrested on March 22, 2021, from Mini Price, Kampala while staging a protest against the outcome of the January presidential elections and demanding the release of the National Unity Platform (NUP) supporters who were detained in various facilities across the country.
Ssegirinya allegedly marched through the streets with placards containing a list of names of people who had been arrested during campaigns and remained in police custody, long after the polls. He was subsequently charged and granted bail before he was arrested on separate charges for which he has remained in detention for almost a year.
Today, when the matter came up for further hearing, state attorney Allan Mucunguzi asked the court for an adjournment saying that he wanted to bring the last witness in the case. But Ssegirinya’s lawyers led by Jonathan Kiryowa protested the adjournment, saying that the trial has dragged on and the court should order the prosecution to close its case at this stage.
However, Kamasanyu said that both parties have not been around for more than a year and since they were present today, it wouldn’t be fair to close the prosecution case when they still have witnesses to present before the court.
Despite the ruling, the Zoom link from Kigo Prison, where Ssegirinya is currently detained remained unstable and interrupted the proceedings. It’s against this background that the magistrate directed the prosecution to produce its last witness on August 11, 2022.
Last year, before the case stalled, the prosecution had adduced evidence from three witnesses who pinned him on the same charges. They included Flavia Musimenta, the officer in charge of the Mini-Price police post who arrested Ssegirinya, Kampala Central police station operations officer David Nahamya who also participated in the arrest and statement recording and Erias Kijjampora, the investigating officer in the case.
