By Mulengera Reporters
During a Court session this week, 30-year-old Quarish Yasiin Lubowa Segirinya, a Kisekka market mechanic who has been remanded in Luzira since last May, wore a bold face and told the Magistrate that he was tired of bad prison food.
He is being prosecuted by state prosecution lawyers from Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) on allegations that in May, he was caught-red handed tampering with and vandalising telecommunications-enabling equipment belonging to American Tower Corporation (ATC), which is located on the telecom tower site situated on top of Namakonkome hill, near Matuga in Wakiso’s Nansana Municipality.
Quarish, who has no lawyer (is self-represented) and is supposed to be commencing on his defence after prosecution completed leading all their witnesses, was speaking moments after a group of UCC state prosecutors (led by Dr. Abdul Salaam Waiswa) had just finished addressing Court on the fact that they had closed their case and are waiting on to the trial Chief Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu to declare whether the accused person has a case to answer or not.
Kamasanyu, who intends to deliver her case-to-answer ruling in a few days time, asked Quarish (who is a repeat offender having served prison sentence before on similar offences) to say something in response to what the state prosecutors had just said.
The 30-year-old, who doesn’t seem that much apprehensive about the possibility of being sentenced to more than five years of jail term, instead casually walked towards the table where the state prosecutors were seated and demand to shake hands with them.
When they snubbed his handshake, Quarish turned to face the Chief Magistrate declaring: “Your Honour, you can see for yourself how these men aren’t easy at all.
Okay if they can’t reciprocate my handshake offer, at least let them buy for me some nice lunch today and I eat before leaving this place because I’m tired of prison food.”
The Magistrate and everyone else in Court burst into laughter as UCC lawyers casually responded with: “We have heard your request and we shall look into it next time.”
Since the beginning of the trial earlier this year, the UCC prosecutors have had to endure a lot of provocation from this particular suspect because Quarish has always behaved like a bully, totally oblivious of what awaits him at the end of the trial.
Originally, perhaps to hide the fact that he is a repeat offender, he had lied about his names by disclosing to the arresting officers that he is called Quarish Segirinya. His earlier conviction and sentence related to someone called Segirinya Yasiin.
It took Her Worship Kamasanyu insisting that she had ever convicted this same person on exactly similar offences before, while still operating at the Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court in the middle of Kampala town (before relocating to the current Makindye location). Quarish at first denied being the person Kamasanyu was referring to, only to reluctantly accept later.
During the trial, whenever prosecution presented its star witnesses who gave compelling evidence (even after being cross-examined by him), Quarish would crack and declare readiness to enter a plea-bargain deal: in which case he accepts guilt in return for lighter sentencing.
He informs Court that he wants to take that deal, proposed by him only to change his mind days later. Kamasanyu has always reminded him of his right to maintain his innocence or not guilty plea instead of accepting offences which he believes he didn’t commit.
Quarish (against whom very implicating videos & photos on the crime scene exist) has previously signalled he can only plead guilty if the state prosecutors assure him, he will be allowed the option of paying a fine as opposed to serving out a custodial sentence.
He says he wants to go home and provide for his young family and the state prosecutors from UCC have maintained this isn’t their case but the complainant’s.
They have also consistently informed him that even after a plea-bargain deal has been agreed upon; the trial Magistrate remains the one with the last word regarding how long the convicted person gets jailed. In his case, being a repeat offender, Quarish faces a jail term of not less than 5 years.
So, all said and done, the UCC lawyers know the pedigree of the playful and very indifferent suspect they are prosecuting in the relation to the May vandalism incident which was occasioned past mid-night at the ATC’s telecom tower or mast Namakonkome site near Matuga.
He has been a bully throughout the trial, often barking at witnesses during cross-examination sessions. He one time demanded to cross-examine one of the UCC lawyers, only to be guided by the Magistrate that this was alien and unacceptable. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
