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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The High Court in Kampala has awarded Kasese National Unity Platform Party Registrar Samuel Busindi Masereka with 30 million shillings as compensation for torture.
In his decision delivered on Friday, the Civil Division Judge Musa Ssekaana ordered the government which was jointly sued with the former Director of Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence to pay the amount of money after finding that his rights were violated while under state custody.
“Upon reviewing the submissions and evidence presented, this honourable court finds that the applicant has established a credible claim for the infringement of his constitutional rights. The applicant has demonstrated that he was subjected to inhumane treatment, compromising his rights to dignity, freedom from torture, and personal liberty, as safeguarded by the Constitution”, held Ssekaana.
The Judge indicated that the award is compensation for the injuries Masereka sustained on his body and a reaffirmation of the court’s role in upholding constitutional protections and human dignity.
“Despite the respondents’ arguments that the applicant failed to adequately prove his claims or provide sufficient documentation, this court finds otherwise. Given the gravity of the constitutional violations presented, the applicant is entitled to effective redress. In line with Article 50(1) of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda and jurisprudence mandating meaningful compensation for rights violations, the applicant is awarded UGX 30,000,000 as general damages”, added Ssekaana.
According to Justice Ssekaana, the conduct of the government amounted to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and violated Masereka’s rights to personal liberty.
However, Justice Musa Ssekaana ruled that Masereka did not lead any iota of evidence to show that Maj General Abel Kandiho the then CMI Director was involved in his torture or prolonged incarceration in detention.
Ssekaana said that it would appear Kandiho was merely added as a scarecrow without any basis or allegation of torture of the applicant. He thus exonerated Kandiho saying he did not violate Masereka’s rights.
In 2022, Masereka applied to the Civil Division of the High Court, saying he was arrested on January 7th 2022 at around 6 pm while playing pool table at a local pub in Kasese Town by three operatives wearing UPDF uniforms attached to CMI.
They confiscated his phone and barred him from informing his family members about what had happened.
He narrated that immediately after his arrest, a pistol was pointed in his mouth and asked to remain silent and dragged into a drone car and whisked to Kasese Central Police Station and then to Kilembe Police Post where he spent a night.
But when he asked the police officers to help him call his relatives and inform them about his arrest, Masereka alleges that they told him that they were under instructions that he shouldn’t talk to anybody.
According to Masereka, the following day, operatives dressed in UPDF uniform picked him up together with a police officer he only identified as Bwambale and took him to his home for a search which lasted for about three hours and his property including a laptop, National ID, flash disk, sim card and all NUP documents used for Mobilization were confiscated as exhibits.
Masereka noted that he was later handcuffed and driven to Kampala in the company of three UPDF operatives who hooded him and proceeded to an unknown destination.
Masereka said that upon reaching the destination which he later discovered from other detainees that it was CMI in Mbuya, he was undressed and taken while naked to the reception to have his particulars recorded.
He added that on January 9th 2022, while his arms at that time had spent three days handcuffed and hooded, he was led for interrogation before four officers who allegedly battered him with cables, flogged and waterboarded him after he had given answers to questions related to the funding and next move for NUP that the investigators found unsatisfactory.
Justice Ssekaana heard that this was repeated every day until when he was released on January 26th 2022 from the Special Investigations Department of Police in Kireka where CMI officers reportedly took him before being granted a police bond on allegations of involving himself in subversive activities.
“That one of the interrogators poured very hot water on my legs and feet out of which I developed grievous bodily injuries and wounds that are still visible and fresh to this date which had made my movement hard”, reads Masereka’s affidavit.
Adding that “I was beaten to a point of becoming lifeless, numb and with serious convulsions and only woke up finding myself sleeping in a solitary confinement.. oozing blood from my mouth, nose genitals, back all over my hands and body”.
His lawyers of PACE Advocates led by George Musisi, told URN that Masereka was later driven and dropped in Mityana District and told to fend for himself about how he can reach Kasese and his family was ignorant of his whereabouts and had reported a case of a missing person.
The court further heard that Masereka was later admitted to St Francis Nsambya Hospital and he incurred huge bills to put his life back together. To-date he still goes to the hospital to dress the wounds and he is worried his life will never be the same again.
In 2019, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni assented to the Human Rights Enforcement Bill, thereby putting in place a law that prohibits torture of suspects and imposing individual liabilities on a person found to have tortured a suspect or violated his constitutional rights while in State custody.
Masereka has also proceeded under this same Act to sue the former CMI Director Maj General Abel Kandiho to be held personally liable for torture by his officers whom he was supervising and the Attorney General.
In 2021, the Mityana Municipality Member of Parliament Francis Zaake was awarded more than 70 million shillings by Lady Justice Esta Nambayo for torture inflicted on him in state custody.
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