By Mulengera Reporters
Last week, while appearing to give evidence against two telecom engineers now on trial for allegedly vandalizing and stealing lithium batteries belong to American Towers Corporation (ATC), 55-year-old Peter Okello (a security guard working under SWAT security company) told Her Worship Gladys Kamasanyu why in his entire life, he will never forget the events of 23rd March 2023.
On that day, Okello (who has done his job since 2015) was at his work station (ATC telecom masts tower site) at Bulaga hill along Mityana Road in Wakiso district when a greyish Nissan Terrano UAQ 740U pulled up at the entrance. He was relaxing while watching over the ATC site at which he is deployed to protect and ensure no thieves or vandals ever come around to vandalize and steal telecom equipment.
These masts are ATC’s which rents or leases them out to telecom companies to ensure that their network (for calls, for internet customers etc) is on and fast 24/7. Breaches at such mast sites result into telecom customers not being able to effectively make their calls, internet users being unable to connect and bank ATM users or customers not being able to transact (you put in your ATM card but no transaction can be effected & the machine shows service is down).
ATC is required by Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), the regulator, to ensure that the telecom service and network is on/available 99% of the time. Anything less than that will amount to a breach of contract and regulatory requirements besides affecting network quality, costing business reputation for the telecom firms and triggering consumer protection concerns for the regulator.
These masts or towers are what boost telecom network reception, the quality and must be on 24/7. To ensure that the network quality and service is on 24/7, ATC (unable to only rely on UEDCL power supply) maintains back up plans to ensure the masts are powered and are on 24/7. This mitigation back up plan includes relying on standby diesel generators, which are costly and can sometimes fail too. So, the alternative becomes reliance on lithium batteries which are solar-powered, less costly and yet reliable and very effective.
This is why these lithium batteries are a treasure and very lucrative stuff to trade in for those who know them and understand their value. You have to be a telecom engineer to appreciate the value embedded in such things. ATC imports thousands of them mainly from USA, EU and Italy because these are the best quality, durable, reliable and yet affordable because of their reliance on solar energy sources to remain powered for such long periods of time.
SOME CONTEXT: A quick google internet search shows that each of these lithium batteries costs not less than Shs15m. Yet ATC procures thousands of them to be able to sustainably power and operate the hundreds of Bulaga-like telecom masts sites across the country.
The desire to vandalize such sites and steal these lithium batteries explains why site vandalism cases have lately been on the increase to the extent that the President recently directed the CDF and other security chiefs to put in place a rapid response unit to take on such vandals who Gen Museveni has since categorized as economic terrorists and saboteurs. He actually has refused to put the court martial option off the table, when it comes to prosecuting and trying such vandals.
Those occasioning such vandalism operations have gradually grown into squads of sophisticated crime enterprise, which is why the President is convinced that a specialized rapid response unit has to be established comprising of army, police and intelligence capabilities.
The H.E, who is concerned that growing vandalism cases targeting lithium batteries, could hurt investor confidence (ATC is a former investor or firm from the US) believes the vandalism crime has sophisticated and has grown to levels which the Uganda Police Force alone can’t manage.
BACK TO AFANDE PETER OKELLO: As all that Presidential level intervention is being awaited, ATC is continuing to heavily invest in telecom mast sites’ security, including contracting private security companies like SWAT for which Mzee Peter Okello works.
On the mid-afternoon of 23rd March 2023, a vandalism and theft incident happened at the Bulaga ATC mast site resulting into the surveillance and arrest of two of Kampala’s renowned telecom engineers namely Charles Kasirye and Hamdan Mukwaya. CCTV camera and tracking technology enabled ATC investigators to create a linkage between these two and the vandalism/theft incident at Bulaga.
Their other, accomplice Lawrence Leti, who allegedly played a very big role in enabling the incident as will be shown later in this story, has also since been added and co-charged under Uganda vs. Charles Kasirye, Hamadan Mukwaya & Leti Lawrence. The trio, and others still at large, is being prosecuted at the Makindye-based Standards, Utilities & Wildlife Court.
Their ongoing trial, which has been prolonged largely because the two engineers had at some point jumped bail and absconded from coming to Court, is being presided over by Chief Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu who a few days ago had to wear a bold face and rebuke the two engineers (Mukwaya & Kasirye) to stop wearing masks during court sessions, ostensibly to avoid being photographed by journalists, because as far as she is concerned, there is nothing that needs to be hidden anymore, about their criminal trial.
In her characteristic jocular style, Kamasanyu shouted at the two telecom engineers saying: “I think you guys have been coming to court wearing those masks for too long. You need to put them off because you are actually hurting your own health, because it has become too much. And in any case, there is nothing that needs to or can be hidden from people in this court anymore about this trial.”
The two engineers, who are wealthy and always have a large group of relatives and friends coming to Court to stand in solidarity with them, justified their endless masking with “we are not hiding from anything and the truth, Your Honor, is that we are sick, which is why we are always having our masks on.” Kamasanyu waved her hands in the air and gestured towards them saying “it’s okay, it’s up to you if you have chosen to hurt your own health.”
Their masking notwithstanding, Afande Peter Okello and other state prosecution witnesses are determined to keep coming to court to give evidence aimed at enabling prosecutors from UCC to demonstrate to court that these two engineers indeed are part of the bigger racket whose members have for years been facilitating and enabling the vandalization and stealing of telecom masts from ATC sites across Uganda.
During his last court appearance, Mzee Okello narrated to the Magistrate how on 23rd March 2023, the trio pulled up at his work place-Bulaga hill-and used Leti to dupe him into leaving the site, which gave them cover to effect their mischief. Security guard Okello was allegedly approached by Leti who pretended to be feeling unwell and begged him to direct him to a nearby pharmacy to buy pain killers.
The practice is that engineers, cruising in posh vehicles, always visit and gain access to such ATC mast sites to carry out routine maintenance works. Being a security guard, whose work is to merely watch over the site from outside without being permitted any access into the metal-barricaded mast shelter, Okello doesn’t know each and every ATC engineer.
He says on the fateful day, he construed the trio to be part of such engineers-because indeed these ATC sites are rarely visited by any strangers. The two (Kasirye & Mukwaya) remained in the Nissan Terrano (UAQ 740 U, grey in colour) as Afande Okello escorted their colleague Leti who indicated to him he had failed to understand his verbal directions to the nearest pharmacy. He walked him there and court was told this is some 30 minutes walk away.
The two engineers, who Okello never suspected for anything mischievous, remained behind seated in the Nissan Terrano as their colleague Leti was escorted to the pharmacy. The mast site shelter was totally locked and intact as always. Yet on return, Okello says he realized from some distance away that the entrance had been breached and the cabin, in which the 24 lithium batteries for ATC are always kept, had equally been broken into.
Claiming to be still weak, after taking the painkillers, Leti asked to take some rest at the pharmacy and the attendants allowed him to rest under a tree in the compound of their facility. Okello returned to the site alone, having left Leti behind. On his way, he found the Nissan Terrano descending down the hill, back from the site where he had left the two engineers.
Some instinct caused him to turn and face the Nissan Terrano that was leaving the site (he had just bypassed it). He went as far as getting a small dry stick which he used to scribble the vehicle number plate on his left hand, just in case. He felt suspicious only for his fears to be confirmed when he realized the site shelter had been breached and broken into.
He immediately rang control room at his SWAT security headquarters and read the vehicle number to his supervisor as re-enforcement teams were being dispatched to Bulaga. Using CCTV tracking technology, the SWAT supervisors immediately began tracking the vehicle. Upon inspection, it was realized that out of the 24 lithium batteries that were in the cabin, inside the mast shelter, 18 were missing. Each of these costs Shs15m.
Totally confused and unsure of what awaited him, Afande Okello (now regretting why he acted kindly towards the three strangers who he fallaciously thought were ATC engineers coming for routine maintenance) ran to the pharmacy only to find Leti, who had pretended to be very sick and weak, gone.
The attendants told him he had jumped into the Nissan Terrano and drove off with its occupants. In the end, the SWAT supervisors managed to use CCTV tracking capabilities to arrest Leti who was locked up Wandegeya Police station. A suspect’s identification parade was twice conducted and Afande Okello was able to consistently identify Leti as the man he saw and escorted to the pharmacy. Subsequently, the other engineer bosses (Kasirye & Mukwaya) were also arrested and charged with vandalism and theft.
LETI TURNS VS THE TWO ENGINEERS: On Tuesday, the prosecutors from UCC, which these days is mandated to prosecute such cases because its lawyers are presumed to have the specialized understanding and know-how, led Afande Okello as one of their witnesses. He was so coherent in the evidence he gave to the extent that Leti felt overwhelmed and turned against his co-accused, the two engineers, and corroborated Okello’s evidence implicating and placing them at the scene of crime.
Apparently, Leti felt betrayed to see that the two engineers got a defence lawyer for themselves and left him to carry his own cross in the dock. He remained unrepresented, maybe because he is a former security guard with no money to hire a lawyer, which must have pushed him into making a U-turn to give evidence that is beneficial to the prosecution case.
He raised his hand and indicated to Chief Magistrate Kamasanyu, there is something he wanted to tell court. He corroborated everything Afande Okello had said and went as far as revealing that he was in that same Nissan Terrano as they drove back to Kampala. He told Court he travelled with the two engineers from the pharmacy and that he indeed saw the 18 lithium batteries Afande Okello reported as missing. That the 18 batteries were put in the back part of Nissan Terrano and that he sat next to them as they drove back from Bulaga.
He confessed that when they reached Mengo area, the two engineers (now communicating in Luganda which he says he doesn’t understand being a man from Arua) made phone calls to people who opened a huge gate inside which the batteries were offloaded. As the two engineers angrily looked at him, as if going to swallow him, Leti narrated how they put him off and got him a boda-boda which took him to Arua Park as he was travelling home (Arua) that day. That after offloading the ATC batteries, the two engineers drove in the direction of Entebbe Road.
Leti narrated to the Magistrate how the two engineers picked him from Makerere-Kikoni and offered to give him a lift when he indicated to them he wanted to go to Arua Park. “However, I was surprised when they drove in another direction until when we reached at Bulaga,” Leti told Court. He explained how he came to know the two co-accused as telecom engineers initially working on UTL projects or sites (and later on Airtel ones). That as of that time, he was working as a security guard for one of the private security companies which used to have the contract to guard and secure UTL masts’ sites.
The shocking U-turn Leti made in Court that Tuesday motivated the state prosecutors from UCC while at the same time throwing the defence plot into total disarray. The confusion was too much to the extent that the defence lawyer representing the two engineers got overwhelmed and asked the Magistrate to grant an adjournment so that he could go to join his relatives in working out the burial arrangements of his sister whose death he said had just been communicated to him in a text message.
The other remarkable thing Leti did was to seek to turn tables on prosecution witness Afande Peter Okello who he told court was actually a 5th columnist who worked with the two telecom engineers to betray ATC and his employer, SWAT Security, to have the 18 lithium batteries stolen from the Bulaga site that fateful day.
He denied being involved in anything sinister and made it clear he didn’t feign sickness to provide cover for the vandalism and theft acts that happened. He maintained that he was indeed unwell and needed painkillers. He suggested that Afande Okello answers for his negligence, which led him to walk away from the site creating a more than 30 minutes loophole, which the two alleged engineering vandals exploited to take off with the 18 lithium batteries.
On seeing how angrily the two accused telecom engineers looked at Leti as he gave evidence and corroborated Afande Okello’s utterances against them, Chief Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu pleaded with them not to plot doing anything mischievous against him from inside Luzira prisons cells (the trio is on remand). She made reference to the preceding days’ incident in Masindi prison where one of the inmates strangled and killed another inside the prison cells.
Afande Okello protested being implicated by loudly shouting at Leti who he told court he was now regretting ever helping to take to the pharmacy. “In fact, I thank God because I think that’s how He planned to save me from death that day because Your Honor, I’m now convinced that if I hadn’t taken him to the pharmacy, they would have killed me. They would be three people against one and I can tell you from what I now see, these guys are deadly. There is no way I was going to survive because it was going to be three against one, poor me,” Afande Okello told the Magistrate in his naughty English accent, sparking off prolonged laughter inside the tightly-packed court room.
Yet the woes of the two engineers seem to be far from over because days after Afande Peter Okello’s testimony, UCC prosecutors unleashed another witness (George Baraza, a 56-year-old Policeman) who gave evidence alleging them to have used the same Nissan Terrano to occasion another similar vandalism and theft incident targeting ATC masts’ site at Waina hill (Busiiro Sub County Luuka district) from where several lithium batteries were similarly stolen.
The Luuka incident allegedly happened on 14th March 2023, nine (9) days before the raid on the Bulaga site. Afande Baraza’s evidence related to the contents of criminal investigations file SD05/14/03/2023 of Busiiro Police Station in Luuka district. In his evidence, the Policeman demonstrated to Court how the CCTV tracking technology (whose footage is all available) had corroborated the fact that this same Nissan Terrano was indeed in the Busoga, Jinja & Luuka areas on the day the Waina vandalism incident happened.
He also told Court about readiness to bring identification witnesses who saw the two telecom engineers and the impugned vehicle around the Waina mast site area that very same day.
The same prosecution witness further disclosed to court the entire team of detectives and the security experts he worked with from UCC and Police to have the vehicle impounded and effect the summoning and the arresting of the two engineers who remain remanded in Luzira prison over several vandalism and lithium batteries’ theft incidents targeting telecom equipment and infrastructure in different parts of the country, all belonging to ATC. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
