By Mulengera Reporters
For the last 18 months (counting from April 2023), telecom engineers Amdan Mukwaya and Charles Kasirye have been on remand in Luzira prison. They are being prosecuted by state prosecutors from UCC with the alleged theft of telecom equipment, including over 50 lithium batteries, from three telecom mast sites belonging to American Tower Corporation (ATC).
The telecom tower sites from which the equipment is alleged to have been stolen include one at Bulaga near Buloba in Wakiso along Mityana road, another at Entebbe and one more at Waira in Luuka district in Busoga. The duo is being charged with three different files relating to similar transactions committed at different locations on different days, different months.
Having completed investigations in close collaboration with detectives from Uganda Police, state prosecutors from UCC have spent much of this year 2025 bringing witnesses to court to pin the duo who originally was confident of court victory and was unbothered. Even after 18 months on remand, the two engineers remain financially solid and seemingly powerful because whenever they are brought to court, their spouses, relatives and friends show up in large numbers and end up filling the court room.
However, their confidence recently cracked after UCC prosecutors registered unexpected breakthroughs. The first one was the cracking of their co-accused Lawrence Leti, a former ATC security guard, who claims was with them on the day the Bulaga site was raided and 18 lithium batteries (valued at roughly Shs300m) stolen. On that day, three men travelled in a grey Nissan Terrano UAQ and these basically were the two engineers and security guard Leti.
One of prosecution witness, an elderly security guard who was guarding the Bulaga site that day only to be duped by Leti who claimed to be unwell and requested to be escorted to a nearby clinic, appeared and positively identified the trio in Court before Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu. He had earlier on helped police to identify Leti as the man he escorted to the clinic, during the identification parade that was organized at the Wandegeya police division.
In his evidence, the elderly guard was able to identify Leti and claimed the other two men he travelled with in the Terrano on the fateful day looked exactly like Amdan Mukwaya and Kasirye. Other corroborative evidence, including CCTV camera footage, has since authenticated the elderly guard’s evidence.
Leti, who continues to equally be on remand, got angry when the two engineers got for themselves lawyers to defend them while leaving him on his own. Indeed, he is defending himself as the two engineers continued to be legally represented by Counsel Malik Mbowa. Feeling vulnerable after several witnessed gave strong evidence for prosecution, Leti (who is a poor man with no money to afford a lawyer for himself) recently told court he was changing his plea from innocent to guilty.
This naturally increased vulnerability of the two engineers. And then on Monday 22nd December, the duo’s fate clearly seemed sealed when the state prosecution lawyers informed court that as part of the plea-bargaining deal, Leti had accepted to switch sides and give evidence for prosecution, further pinning and implicating the two engineers.
As if that wasn’t troubling enough, the owner of the Terrano (which continues to waste away in the Makindye court compound as an exhibit) who had been missing and elusive for almost two years, all of a sudden got in touch with the UCC prosecutors and offered to come to court and testify against the two engineers. He is prepared to verbally tell Court that his vehicle (which the prosecution says was used in the Bulaga and Waira theft incidents) was always hired by the two engineers and that this went on for some time.
He even has some documentation in terms of receipts and payments the two engineers would make as consideration for them to use his vehicle. That will be very incriminating evidence and very hard to contradict by the two engineers who had all along maintained that they don’t know anything about the vehicle which Leti says is the one 18 batteries from Bulaga were carried in from Bulaga. Even the CCTV footage from Waira and Bulaga corroborates the fact that this is the vehicle that was on the crime scene on the day the ATC batteries were stolen.
As the engineers (who as previously as last month pleaded guilty only to chicken out after state prosecutors insisted on a jail sentence of 36 months as opposed to the 24 which the two accused persons preferred) reflected on all these complications, Dr. Abdul Salaam Waiswa who leads the UCC prosecutors on Monday 22nd December told Court that on 12th January they intend to formally make an application to Court to be allowed to call in and lead a few more witnesses to come and give evidence even after the accused persons are done making their defense case. Should Gladys Kamasanyu, the trial Magistrate, grant that application, the two engineers will find themselves faced with a much more complicated situation than it has been.
During the last Monday court session, defense Counsel Malik Mbowa told Court that his clients were requesting for another two weeks to think through everything and determine if it makes sense for them to change their plea and plead guilty not only on the Bulaga file but the other two as well-of Entebbe and Waira.
The Magistrate said changing one’s plea was a right that remains available to the accused person throughout the trial. However, the state prosecutors protested saying they are tired of having their time wasted by the accused persons who keep changing their mind on the plea-bargaining deal.
“Your honor this trial can’t go on forever. It has to come to an end and for us, as prosecution, we are ready to lead more witnesses and bring our case to conclusion,” one of the state prosecutors submitted before Magistrate Kamasanyu who allowed to give the accused persons the requested two weeks to go think about everything and return on 12th January when their lawyer Malik Mbowa will communicate their final decision. The key sticking point relates to how to treat the 18 months already spent on remand when finally trying to find common ground on the proposed sentence the parties have to communicate to the trial Magistrate as part of the plea-bargaining deal.
Prosecution wants the period spent on bail, which had been granted initially under the Bulaga case (before the other two cases/files of Waira and Entebbe came into the picture) to be treated differently when agreeing on a plea-bargain deal on the Bulaga file, contrary to how the accused persons and their lawyer want the same treated. That is why parties are still failing to reach the final plea-bargain agreement on Bulaga. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
