{UAH} Pojim/WBK: There is no crime in Uganda except to be a crusading journalist - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

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There is no crime in Uganda except to be a crusading journalist - Comment

The beauty of murdering a person or stealing a huge amount of public funds in Uganda is that you don't have to be hanged or stay in prison for too long, except maybe in very special circumstances that compel the system to keep you in prison.

You see, bail is a constitutional right in Uganda and while human-rights activists keep fighting the government whenever it wants to abolish automatic bail for certain categories of crime, nobody seems to oppose bail for convicted criminals.

So if you don't want to be bothered too much, you steal several billion shillings, get convicted and then apply for bail pending appeal, while the public rapidly loses interest in your case. Don't ask me how it works, it just works. Ask the lawyers.

And don't blame today's judges for the quick bail given to convicts. It has been around for about as long as Uganda has been independent. I am told it started in the
early 1960s when some robbers hijacked a truck carrying the payroll to western Uganda. They pulled it off in the style of the legendary Great Train Robbery of the
UK from which one Ronald Biggs escaped and became the subject of many myths.

Well, one of the unlucky Ugandan robbers who was caught was convicted, sentenced and a judge decided to grant him bail. Then that little thing called precedent was established and we have never looked back.

The murderers are even luckier. In the late 1990s, a wave of anti-capital punishment gripped virtually all Ugandan prisons officers. Understandably, they were aware of many prisoners who had been wrongly convicted, and that was one reason they opposed hanging to the extent that they said they would never
implement a death sentence.

Yes sir, they actually advised the government to outsource the killing to some private company. So there are no more hangings and capital punishment has been
redefined to mean many years but not being put to death. Today, it would be very risky to hang a person since Ugandan prisons have very many innocent convicts.

This is not my claim, by the way; it is the principal judge who has been saying it repeatedly, disclosing that too many people are pleading guilty when they know they are innocent, but just want to get over with the harrowingly slow justice machinery. The PJ has thus been pleading with innocent people to stop pleading guilty!

But some people are not so lucky after being convicted. Staying free on bail may not always come easy; as we said, there can be special circumstances to keep you in jail. The special circumstances can include being a journalist. There was this crusading journalist Teddy Sseezi Cheeye who rose to fame for exposing grand corruption.

Then his NGO failed to account for less than $100,000, and he has to serve 12 years in jail for it.

In the same city, an official can confidently tell parliament that he doesn't know how $5 million vanished from his office and he does not even get prosecuted. Unlike the journalist, such an official has not stepped on the toes of big people.

There is no crime in Uganda except to be a crusading journalist - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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