For those not used to the manner in which the Museveni State treats the regime’s opponents, the manner in which lawyers of Dr Kizza Besigye and his co-accused Obeid Lutale Kamulegeya are being treated looks like a baptism of fire.
Yet in his two-decade fight against his former bush war comrade’s ‘misrule’ and junta as he prefers to call it, Besigye has seen and experienced the Museveni State at its worst when it feels threatened.
Abducted from Nairobi Kenya and currently locked in Luzira Prison, Besigye will spend a second Christmas behind bars. His co-accused Lutale will endure the woes that come with association with an opposition leader in the Uganda that Museveni has been the dominant figure for nearly four decades now.
But outside the well guarded walls of Luzira, Besigye’s lawyers are having to fight both the visible and the invisible hands of the Museveni State.
Outside the military tribunal on December 10 after Besigye and Lutale were further remanded until January 07, 2025, an army siren attempted to disrupt a press conference by Martha Karua and her team of Besigye lawyers as well as opposition politicians that included former army commander and leader of opposition in Parliament Joel Ssenyonyi.
In Bulenga of Wakiso District outside the capital Kampala, Maj (Rtd) Ronald Iduli, one of Besigye’s lawyers, had spent hours at a police post.
He had missed the proceedings in the kangaroo court at Makindye having been abducted at about 5am. Maj Rtd Ronald Iduli’s charges? Lydia Kibira, a 44-year-old land lady had reported a case of threatening violence by Iduli, a 50-year-old who had retired from the national army.
That Iduli had defaulted rent for 10 months and that he had returned to the premises in army uniform. It was based on this report by Kibira, a nurse by profession, that security agencies raided Iduli’s home in the wee hours.
They picked UPDF digital uniforms, a handbook on the law of war for armed forces, a 2016 certificate of discharge from the UPDF and a pen labelled ‘People’s Front for Freedom,’ a political party that Besigye and his group are registering.
In the military tribunal on December 10, Counsel Eron Kiiza did not get much help from members of the kangaroo court when he reported Iduli’s case.
Kiiza also raised concerns on his security and safety of lawyers defending Besigye and Lutale. Another Besigye lawyer with thorns thrown in her path is Martha Karua Wangari, a former justice minister and politician in Kenya.
Karua is supposed to be the lead counsel for the legal team of Besigye and Lutale. She applied for a temporary practicing certificate from the Uganda Law Council but it was not granted.
The Council, among others, cited politics as the basis for declining to give Karua a practicing certificate.
The Uganda Law Council’s decision has rubbed the Kenyan legal fraternity the wrong way, prompting the the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), which is led by the vocal Faith Odhiambo, to threaten to block Ugandan lawyers from practicing in Kenya.
Martha Karua is now teaming up with ULS led by Isaac Ssemakadde to bang the tables at Law Council as she seeks to reapply for a certificate to defend Besigye in court, as reported Here.
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