By Mulengera Reporters
In his 40s, Lawrence Letti (a retired security guard) has for sometime been serving at Luzira prison on remand. Christened A3 on the Court files, Letti is part of the team of telecom sector suspects who for the last two years have been undergoing criminal trial at the Makindye-based Utilities Chief Magistrate’s Court presided over by Gladys Kamasanyu.
Their woes began in 2023 when a combination of electronic spying and human intelligence enabled Police to link or connect them to a Terrano vehicle (number UAQ….) which CCTV camera evidence indicated is the one in which group members, including telecom engineers, travelled and used on the day they are alleged to have unlawfully gained access to the American Tower Corporation telecom masts tower situated on Bulaga hill along Mityana Road.
The vehicle, which Police had been tracking for months, was recovered from Bweyogerere township when detectives operating under Camera Command Centre at Natete glanced upon it and alerted their colleagues near the Bweyogerere police facility. That’s how the vehicle was intercepted and passed on to Bulaga Police and later on Wakiso where the cases had been opened up weeks earlier.
One of the prosecution witnesses, an old man deployed to serve as a security guard at the Bulaga mast, a few months ago, appeared before Her Worship Kamasanyu (the trial Magistrate) and UCC lawyers led him to give his evidence-clearly explaining what exactly happened on that fateful day.
The old man told Court that the grey Terrano UAQ pulled up at his site where one of the men (it turned out was called Letti) feigned sickness and came out of the Terrano. Pretending to be in too much pain (headache), Letti approached the security guard begging to be taken to the nearest clinic or pharmacy to access urgent medical intervention.
He demanded that the security guard personally escorts him because he was failing to understand the location of the health facility the security guard was directing him to, yet his sickness was rapidly deteriorating. The guard, mistaking the two men who remained seated in the grey Terrano to be the telecom engineers from ATC who always come around for routine maintenance checks, reluctantly agreed to escort Letti.
After being at the facility for some good time, trying to help out for Letti to get better, the security guard bid Letti (his new found friend) farewell and left the facility to return to guard his site. As he ascended back onto the hill (masts are always on the hill for obvious reasons), the security guard saw the grey Terrano (whose occupants he originally thought were ATC staffers) descending. Some instinct told him to take advantage of the slow speed at which the vehicle was descending down the hill, and copy down it’s number plate.
He rushed walking towards the shelter at the mast in which ATC telecom equipment is firmly locked and sealed; to get the book to be able to write down the car number plate just in case (he had at first scribbled it on his hands using a dry stick). His fears were immediately confirmed to be true when he (from a distance) saw and realized that the shelter in which ATC’s lithium batteries are always safely kept, had been tampered with and breached.
He called his immediate security supervisors working for ATC and those under his company, which had been sub contracted to give security at the Bulaga site. As he waited for them to send teams on the ground to assess the extent of damage, the old man rushed back to the medical facility where he was told Letti had been picked by men in the Terrano who drove away with him.
Upon being arrested, using the vehicle they travelled in and used to carry the 18 lithium batteries stolen from the Bulaga site that day, the three men were locked up in prison as Police and UCC enforcement officers did the investigations. It turned out, as per the court file, that the three men were Letti, telecom engineers Charles Kasirye and Hamdan Mukwaya.
On the day the security guard was ably led by the state prosecutors from UCC, he coherently gave his evidence indicating to the Magistrate what he remembers to have happened on the fateful day. He told Court about the more than two times when the identification parade was conducted at Wandegeya Police Station where he positively kept identifying Letti as the man he saw and took to the nearest health facility.
On realizing that the two telecom engineers had selfishly got their own lawyers and left him to fight on his own (he is a self-represented litigant without a lawyer), Letti cracked and indicated to the state prosecutors from UCC that he was considering entering a plea-bargaining deal (namely accepting the offence and get sentenced) whereafter he is determined to become a very helpful witness for the state against his two co-accused-namely telecom engineers Charles Kasirye and Hamdan Mukwaya.
He exhibited readiness to narrate to Court how he was given a lift and carried in the Grey Terrano by the two telecom engineers who he confirms had the batteries the old man said had been stolen from Bulaga. He narrated how they drove all the way to Mengo areas (before heading to Entebbe Road direction) in Kampala as he sat in the back seat next to the lithium batteries. He explained to court how the two men (old friends of his) had got him from Kikoni where he asked them for the lift to enable him travel to the Arua Park to get a bus to travel to Arua. He told Court that, to his surprise, the duo ended up taking a different direction, leading them to Bulaga.
So, last week during the Court session the UCC state prosecutors indicated they had an update to share, which Kamasanyu signaled them to go ahead and do. They informed Court, in the accused person’s presence and hearing, that Letti had finally cracked and agreed with them to be discharged through plea-bargain. Letti confirmed the state prosecutor’s submission that they had indeed agreed on a deal that would work well for him as Letti while not jeopardizing the interests of the ATC, which is the complainant.
It was indicated to the Magistrate that after being sentenced on his own admission of guilt, Letti was more than prepared to switch sides and become a state witness to enable Dr. Abdul Salaam Waisswa & Co quickly prove their case against the two telecom engineers who are concurrently being tried on other charges still related to theft of ATC masts in places like Entebbe and Jinja. Kamasanyu, smiling as always, told the UCC lawyers and Letti that she was pleased they had progressed and reached at some plea-bargain deal.
The Magistrate also said she will be looking forward to being furnished with the well compiled report detailing everything that had been agreed upon during the plea-bargain session(s) between the UCC state prosecutors on one hand and Letti on the other. She gave a new date during which the matter will return to Court for further processing of Letti’s plea-bargaining deal. She also signaled readiness to allow the state prosecutors to bring Letti as a prosecution witness after the plea-bargaining deal has been completed.
The Magistrate once again cautioned the two telecom engineers (Kasirye Charles & Hamdan Mukwaya) against investing or participating in any plot aimed at bumping off Letti whose decision to switch sides and give evidence for the prosecution will predictably tilt the scales in favour of the prosecution team, while further complicating and constraining their defence.
The progress that the UCC legal team members have registered and made on Letti’s case is consistent with Uganda Communications Commission’s zeal and ongoing determination to assert it’s mandate and successfully stand up against those who engage in vandalizing telecommunications infrastructure and equipment and in the process cause financial loss to ATC whose masts and towers are what all major telecom companies rely upon to keep on the network to facilitate phone calls, phone text messaging, phone WhatssApp communication and even effective internet usage. The day the network goes off, as a result of such vandalism acts, even bank customers won’t be able to use their ATM cards to effectively transact.
You will go to the bank and the ATM will tell you that the machine is ‘currently out of service.” Even the public ambulance services and operations or emergency fire fighting operations won’t be possible the moment such network disruptions happen. It’s simply because those in need of such emergency services won’t be able to promptly make the phone call and communicate to say Police seeking rescue services.
This explains why UCC and government wants to see Ugandans become more and more vigilant to the extent of quickly reporting any acts of vandalism at the telecom sites nearest to where they live or stay. Otherwise, the ATC alone and the UCC teams can’t be sufficient. And understandably, the Commission has been under pressure from elected leaders of this country to demonstrate that as the regulator its fully aware of the full extent of vandalism, and is prepared to crack the whip on the perpetrators whenever they are identified.
The case of Letti and his co-accused, whatever way it goes or ends, is also expected to serve some deterrence value to estop other would-be future telecom masts and sites vandals. Should the Magistrate find them guilty, upon conviction, the two telecom engineers (Letti is charged with) could end up serving in prison for not less than 5 years. Hence their impending conviction will signal many other would-be offenders to think twice before plunging into similar criminality. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
