By Mulengera Reporters
Should Gen Peter Elwelu and Deputy IGP Gen MuzeeyiSabiiti walk the talk on what they indicated today Friday during their joint press conference at Police Headquarters in Naguru, then this country won’t be very far from addressing the real problem causing endless crimes in the city.
To their credit, the two Generals (it seems) have finally identified where the problem is-and this is within the office of DPP Mike Chibita whose indifferent and laid-back character has fermented unprecedented corruption, ineptness and inefficiency in the all-important office of the public prosecutor.
Chibita is personally a nice man but too soft for the kawukumi-infested state attorneys and prosecutors who continue colluding with rogue-minded police officers (the IOs) especially those charged with criminal investigations. As Elwelu and Sabiiti rightly pointed out at their news conference, this collusion is the reason many repeat offenders continue to be at large because every time they are reported to have committed violent offences, the deeply corrupt prosecutors connive with Grace Akullo’s IOs at the numerous Police Divisions to deliberately present weak evidence leaving Bart Katurebe’s judges and magistrates with no option but to acquit and release the criminal or at best convict them with very ridiculous sentences. That is how criminals keep being released at the end of their short and very lenient sentences only to return to the community and continue from where they stopped in terrorizing hapless citizens.
Mind you they return more crime-hardened, trained and exposed to better criminology techniques because Dr. Johnson Byabashaija’s Luzira prison has become a ground for the more experienced criminals to induct those that are being sentenced there for the first time. This clearly explains (as Elwelu and Sabiiti disclosed) why in all major cases, the criminals who have participated in butchering eminent citizens and committed some of the most profiled crimes in the contemporary Uganda are people who teamed up while in Luzira from where everything is discussed, planned and new executors recruited.
Whereas the Kawukumi-infested prosecutors (some disgusted citizens and lawyers say they are the kawukumi themselves) line their tummies being bribed by such criminal cartels to connive and ensure they get lighter sentences, Ugandans have continued dying without equally indifferent IGP OMO being able to do anything yet much of the problems reside within his own IOs who ask for gratification (in the course of investigations) from complainants and victims of violent crime in the open. They will eat from both the complainant/victim and the suspect and one who pays highest is the one they work for.
The kiwaani Police surgeon operators along Bombo road (as we reported sometime back prompting OMO to institute an inquiry which everybody knows won’t solve anything) are thickly part and parcel of this collusion which Gen Sabiiti and Elwelu must equally become interested in. And this is how it works; the police IOs will deliberately send the victim or complainant to a police surgeon clinic they know is sham (manned by unauthorized persons) and in the end nobody will show up in court to testify corroborating the police medical report the Chibita prosecutors carry on the file as part of the prosecution or state’s case well knowing it’s sham.
And in the absence of any surgeon coming to testify explaining to court the extent of injury and the like to ensure its consistent with the offence for which the accused was charged by the prosecutor, the court magistrate or judge will have no option but to dismiss the case in favor of the accused hardcore criminals or to give light sentences. Yet all this is deliberately a game involving the IOs and the State Attorneys and prosecutors in order to ensure the ingredients of the preferred offence aren’t adequately proved and in the end the Magistrate acquits the criminal back to society and that is how Uganda continues losing its citizens like Maria Nagirinya, Suzan Magara and others. This is the reason many noble-minded senior officers in police are grumblingly whispering that no progress is going to be made unless Gen Sabiiti (with all his good intentions) does something about the CIID-fermented collusion involving IOs, the sham police surgeon operators at Bombo road and other places /towns upcountry and as well as working with Nakalema or the President to ensure the whip is decisively cracked against the deeply corrupt prosecutors who don’t even fear Mr. Chibita anymore.
There is so much impunity among them and they are the reason, Katurebe’s judicial officers have been and will continue releasing many hardcore criminals back to society because court can only decisively convict basing on evidence presented by the Chibita-supervised state attorneys on behalf of the state. In courts like Nabweru (which many consider the headquarters of corruption and inefficiency in the criminal justice system), the prosecutors deliberately absent themselves to make sure the victims/complainants and the magistrates become frustrated and the state’s case dies a natural death.
Many times, the state prosecutors (whose betrayal and mischief the President must inquire into if he is to win the war against criminal gangs) come as late as mid-day (12pm) if they come at all. Imagine coming at 12pm for a case that had been scheduled for 8-9am. To the Magistrate, all this will be indicative of prosecution not being serious yet the Constitution enjoins him/her to protect the innocent. Sometimes, in connivance with the IOs, the state attorney won’t issue summons to witnesses or work towards frustrating effective service (of the same) well knowing the magistrate will in the end find in favor of the accused and dismiss the case for want of prosecution.
In the worst-case scenario, the state attorneys also connive with the police IOs to betray the complainants (their own witnesses in the state case against the accused persons) by confiding into the detained criminals’ gangmates who sometimes can even invest into the murder or disappearance of would-be very important witnesses for the state. This clearly is the reason, Sabiiti is going to fail the hard test the President has set for him. He will only prevail if he gets out of the office and catch the state attorneys, his own IOs and the sham police surgeons who have for long gotten used to turning the criminal justice system into a money-making venture.
Gen Sabiiti had better get to know that handing down instructions or threats to the offending IOs or state attorneys through CIID Director Grace Akullo and DPP Mike Chibita won’t work at all. It won’t deliver any results because the two leaders have simply become too weakened none of their subordinates fears them anymore. The kawukumi-infested officers have to be identified and severely reprimanded for the strong message to be sent down to the rest that this indeed is the Hakuna Mchezo era. Sorting out these three (the IOs, the kiwaani police surgeons like those on Bombo road and state attorneys) will even enable the President to realize that the Magistrates, Judges and judicial officers he bashes are actually not the problem because for them can only act basing on evidence efficient investigations by the IOs make available to the court through the prosecutors’ office.
Gratefully from the utterances the two men made at the Naguru press conference this very Friday, there is hope the real problem is beginning to be understood for what it is and no effort should be spared in isolating, exposing and severely reprimanding the corrupt actors within the office of the public prosecutor, the IOs and the kiwaani police surgeons who extort people’s money and yet lack the qualifications to competently appear before any court to give evidence testifying and implicating the hardcore murders/criminals who keep coming out of jail so easily every now and then and they don’t seem remorseful at all.
PRAISING LDUs
At the same press conference, Gen Elwelu disclosed that they are proud of the President’s intervention through the LDUs. He said the situation would have been worse if the 6,000 LDUs hadn’t been deployed in the city at the instigation of the President. He revealed that in the last 6 months, the LDUs have arrested more than 2000 criminals in the city.
The commander of Land Forces maintained the LDUs are doing a great job to end rampant crime and deal with criminal gangs in Kampala. He insisted they have largely been let down by the ineptness, indifference and betrayal by the state prosecutors and the courts because many times the criminals are curiously released back to the community. But police records show that violent crime has only increased in the last 6 months since the LDUs came into the picture. Elwelu admitted this but maintained the situation would have been worse without the LDUs because the deliberate inefficiency and betrayal in the prosecutor’s office is simply too much. To him these are the people who have irrigated crime; otherwise as security agencies especially the LDUs they have done their best. Many of the criminals the LDUs harvested had been operating in places like Kisenyi, Arua Park, Katwe-Kinyoro, Kawempe-Tula, Nabweru, Kitintale, Mutungo and Kiwatule.
Sabiiti said besides engaging the DPP to ensure his prosecutors begin to take their work seriously and stop their betrayal and grand corruption, they have come up with five new measures to deal with rising home raids including quick and effective response; distribution of telephone lines for nearby police stations; increased supervision; profiling of repeat offenders. He says as long as the DPP betrayal continuers the necessary convictions against the criminals aren’t going to be obtained and it will all get back to square one again. This resolve by Sabiiti and Elwelu is coming only days after the President showed his bitterness and gave an ultimatum to the top police leadership to act and end rampant crime.
Sabiiti and Elwelu made their point against the DPP betrayal by revealing to reporters that more than 79 hardcore criminals had been released in the year 2017 alone by courts because of refusal by Chibita-supervised prosecutors to produce serious evidence leading to severe sentencing. As the much-loathed Chibita prepares to leave for the Supreme Court assignment as a judge (after so many years of total agony by citizens), many Ugandans are only hoping the president will identify someone capable of returning public trust back to the office of DPP which has only deteriorated for the years the very indifferent Chibita has been at the helm. (For comments on this story, email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com or call us on 0200900416).