Muhoozi Beats Besigye in Court

For Dr Kizza Besigye, the courtroom battle over the removal of his lead lawyer Martha Karua and the detention of his co-counsel Erias Lukwago was supposed to establish a broader case: that his right to a fair trial was being systematically undermined.

Instead, on August 11, 2026, the High Court in Kampala rejected that argument, finding that Besigye and his co-accused had not been deprived of their constitutional right to counsel of their choice.

Justice Simon Peter Kinobe dismissed the application filed by Besigye and Hajji Obeid Lutale, although he declined to rule on whether Uganda’s immigration authorities acted lawfully when they blocked and deported Karua.

The ruling therefore leaves one battle open while handing a decisive victory to the State on the central question before the court: whether the actions surrounding Karua and Lukwago had made Besigye’s criminal proceedings constitutionally unfair.

The answer was no.

“The Applicants were not deprived of their constitutional right under Article 28(3)(d) of the Constitution,” Justice Kinobe ruled.

“The circumstances of this case disclose no interference of such a nature or degree as to render the criminal proceedings unfair, nor do they amount to a violation of the non-derogable right to a fair hearing guaranteed under Articles 28 and 44 of the Constitution.”

The case had carried considerable political weight because it brought together three explosive issues surrounding Besigye’s ongoing treason proceedings: his right to choose his lawyers, Karua’s dramatic deportation from Entebbe International Airport and the detention and prosecution of Lukwago.

Besigye’s lawyers had argued that these events were not isolated.

They described them as part of a deliberate campaign to dismantle his defence team.

In an affidavit, Muhindo Morgan asserted that Besigye and Lutale were facing trial while simultaneously pursuing a human rights application concerning their alleged abduction and rendition from Nairobi, torture and military detention.

The applicants argued that Karua, a Senior Counsel from Kenya who had been acting as Besigye’s lead lawyer since November 2024, was essential to both cases.

According to Karua’s affidavit, she arrived at Entebbe on June 22 aboard a Kenya Airways flight and had her passport stamped before being singled out by immigration officials.

She said she was taken to an immigration office where officers “forcibly snatched her two mobile telephones from her without her consent”.

She was subsequently told she could not enter Uganda because of unspecified “security concerns”.

Later, she was served with an immigration notice headed “Notice to Return or Convey Prohibited Immigrant”.

The stated reason for denying her entry was simply “persona non grata”.

Karua was then put on a flight back to Nairobi.

The applicants argued that the action was unlawful and that it had been deliberately timed to cripple their defence.

Their case became even more politically charged because of statements attributed to Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the first respondent.

The ruling reproduces several of the statements allegedly posted from Muhoozi’s verified X account on June 23.

One read:

“Do not blame my great father for this decision. I deported her myself. She’s no longer allowed in our country.”

In another statement concerning Besigye, Muhoozi allegedly wrote:

“What Col. Dr. KB did against our father, Mzee Museveni, in our NRA/UPDF religion is equivalent to a Christian becoming a believer in Sitani. He will not escape his just sentence!”

Then came the most controversial statement:

“I respect Col. Dr. KB for the things he did before he became a traitor. But we will hang him very soon.”

The applicants argued that the statements demonstrated personal involvement in the deportation of Karua and amounted to interference with the independence of the judiciary and Besigye’s presumption of innocence.

They further argued that Lukwago’s arrest and detention had to be viewed alongside Karua’s deportation as part of the same campaign.

But the State rejected that interpretation.

Senior Immigration Officer Kabwijamu Amil told the court that Karua’s exclusion was an administrative immigration decision made after she presented herself for clearance at Entebbe.

He maintained that the decision was made by competent immigration authorities and was not intended to interfere with court proceedings.

“The administrative decision was not made for the purpose of instituting, influencing nor interfering with any criminal proceedings pending before any court of law,” he stated.

He also rejected the suggestion that immigration authorities had interfered with Besigye’s choice of lawyers.

“The National Citizenship and Immigration Control did not prevent the Applicants from obtaining legal representation before any Courts,” he said.

The prosecution went further.

Chief State Attorney Joseph Kyomuhendo told the court that Besigye and Lutale were hardly without legal representation.

According to him, the accused were represented by “thirteen (13) law firms and over fifty (50) advocates of their choice”.

That became one of the decisive facts in the judgment.

Justice Kinobe noted that the record showed Besigye and Lutale had “approximately thirteen law firms comprising more than fifty advocates”.

“These same advocates extracted Chamber Summons from this court,” he observed.

The prosecution also pointed to the steps taken by the trial court whenever the absence of Karua or Lukwago became an issue.

The court had adjourned proceedings to give the defence time to reorganise its legal team. It had also directed the Registrar to provide a list of State Brief advocates from which Besigye could select counsel.

“Such conduct is wholly inconsistent with any suggestion that the court intended to deprive the Applicants of their right to counsel of their choice,” Justice Kinobe said.

The judge nevertheless recognised the importance of the right at stake.

Article 28(3)(d) of the Constitution provides that an accused person shall be permitted to appear before court “at that person’s own expense, by a lawyer of his or her choice”.

Justice Kinobe described that protection as “one of the indispensable components of the broader constitutional guarantee of a fair hearing”.

He also noted that Article 44(c) makes the right to a fair hearing non-derogable.

But the judge stopped short of treating the right to counsel of choice as absolute.

“I am persuaded by the reasoning in the above decision and find no reason to depart from it,” he said, referring to a Kenyan case involving the right to counsel.

“Although the right to a fair hearing is non-derogable, the exercise of the right to legal representation by counsel of one’s choice must be undertaken within the bounds of law and reasonableness and in a manner that does not undermine the orderly administration of justice.”

That principle became central to the court’s reasoning.

“The principle is not absolute in its application,” Justice Kinobe said, adding that it must be balanced against “the need to ensure an expeditious and orderly conduct of proceedings”.

For Karua, the court found another route available to the defence.

Uganda’s new rules on electronic filing and virtual proceedings allow lawyers to participate remotely.

The judge noted that physical presence in Uganda is therefore not always necessary.

“These provisions demonstrate that physical presence within Uganda is not, in every circumstance, indispensable to participation in judicial proceedings,” he ruled.

He added that Besigye’s lawyers “could have sought appropriate directions from the trial Court regarding remote participation by Hon. Martha Karua, SC”.

Importantly, however, Justice Kinobe stressed that virtual proceedings did not erase the constitutional right to counsel of choice.

“The availability of virtual proceedings does not, of itself, extinguish the constitutional right to counsel of choice,” he said.

It was the evidence surrounding the alleged connection between Muhoozi’s statements and Karua’s deportation that ultimately failed to persuade the court.

The judge said the applicants had exhibited the social-media publications but had not produced sufficient evidence linking Muhoozi to the immigration decision.

“Beyond exhibiting the publications, the Applicants have not established a sufficient evidential nexus between those statements and the immigration decision affecting Hon. Martha Karua, SC.”

More specifically, the judge said there was no “cogent evidence” showing that Muhoozi exercised legal authority over the immigration officials or that the decision was made at his direction.

That finding was crucial because the applicants had relied heavily on Muhoozi’s public claim:

“I deported her myself. She’s no longer allowed in our country.”

The court did not, however, use the case to pronounce on whether that immigration decision itself was lawful.

Instead, Justice Kinobe drew a sharp distinction between a human-rights enforcement case and a judicial review challenge.

“The appropriate procedure for directly challenging the immigration decision is Judicial Review,” he ruled.

He said a judicial review case would be the proper forum to examine whether immigration officials acted illegally, irrationally or with procedural impropriety.

The applicants had therefore lost the case before Justice Kinobe, but the judgment did not validate the legality of Karua’s deportation.

Rather, the court expressly declined to determine that question.

“On the question of the denial of entry to any person, this Court declines to determine the legality or otherwise, of the administrative immigration decision,” the judge said.

For Besigye, the ruling closes one legal avenue while leaving another potentially open.

For Muhoozi, it represents a significant courtroom victory in a politically charged dispute in which the defence had accused him of personally helping dismantle Besigye’s legal team.

The court ultimately found that Besigye and Lutale remained represented, that they had access to numerous advocates, that proceedings had been adjusted to accommodate changes in their defence team and that the evidence did not establish a constitutional violation.

“The burden rested upon the Applicants to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that the Respondents deliberately interfered with or substantially impaired their constitutional right to legal representation,” Justice Kinobe said.

“That burden has not been discharged.”

The application was dismissed.

But there was no order for costs.

Justice Kinobe explained that the case raised “fundamental constitutional questions” which should not be burdened with financial sanctions.

The ruling thus leaves the political confrontation far from settled.

The court has not ruled that Karua’s deportation was lawful. It has not endorsed the immigration authority’s stated reason of “persona non grata”. And it has not determined whether Muhoozi’s public statements were accurate descriptions of his role.

What it has decided is narrower—and consequential.

For the purposes of Besigye’s human-rights application, the disruption of his defence team did not rise to the level of a constitutional denial of a fair hearing.

And in that courtroom contest, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba emerged on the winning side.

Meanwhile, Martha Karua has reminded Museveni he will not be president forever, vowing never to return to Uganda until the regime has changed, as reported Here.