The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT, URN & AFP | A Ugandan activist jailed last year for insulting President Yoweri Museveni, was convicted of cyber harassment of the head of state on Thursday for which she could face a further three years in prison, her lawyer said.
The Ugandan university researcher and outspoken critic of Museveni, Stella Nyanzi, was “found her guilty of cyber harassment,” lawyer Isaac Semakadde told AFP.
However, a second charge of “offensive communication” was dropped, he added.
Nyanzi — who was originally detained and tried in July 2017 for calling Museveni “a pair of buttocks” — was arrested again in November 2018 and has since spent nine months in prison for what prosecutors described as a “brutish attack on the person of the President and his late mother”.
Responding to her new conviction on Thursday, Semakadde said Nyanzi did not “agree with the ruling but we are waiting for the sentence to be handed down” on Friday.
“Without being challenged, the ruling means she will spend three more years in prison on top of nine months she has been in prison,” Semakadde said.
Nevertheless, Nyanzi was “ready to face the consequences because she feels she is fighting a just cause,” the lawyer added.
According to a local journalist who was present at the ruling, Nyanzi said she was “very disappointed at the verdict of offensive communication against Yoweri Museveni”, who has been in power since 1986.
“I intended to annoy Yoweri Museveni. We are tired of his dictatorship”, she was quoted as saying.
She has also hit out at the president’s wife Janet Museveni, who is the country’s education minister, accusing her of abandoning a campaign promise of free sanitary towels in schools.
A research associate at Kampala’s prestigious Makerere University, Nyanzi holds a doctorate on sexuality in Africa.
In 2017, she told AFP that “so-called vulgar words are sometimes the best way to get your message across”.
Public opinion in Nigeria is divided about her comments on Facebook, where she has more than 200,000 followers.
The court case today
On Thursday, Buganda Road Court Grade one Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu convicted Nyanzi on grounds that there was overwhelming evidence. However, Nyanzi was acquitted of offensive communication because prosecution failed to adduce evidence to show how President Yoweri Museveni was annoyed by her posts.
She becomes the first person to be convicted under the Computer Misuse Act which came into law a few years ago.
The conviction stems from a case in which Nyanzi is accused of posting a loutish birthday poem on her Facebook page on September 16, 2018, attacking the late Esteri Kokundeka the mother to President Museveni. Court heard that the poem was written in a vulgar language.
Although prosecution adduced evidence from three witnesses to pin Nyanzi, court mainly relied on the evidence of Detective Assistant Superintendent of Police Bill Ndyamuhaki of the Cyber Crimes Department of Police.
Kamasanyu said that Ndyamuhaki adduced overwhelming evidence to show how he was able to prove that Nyanzi owned the Facebook account where the indecent poem was posted.
She noted that Ndyamuhaki tendered before court the evidence including exhibits such as activation codes used to create Nyanzi’s Facebook account, the documents showing the number that activated the Facebook account, a photocopy of the passport Nyanzi reportedly used to apply for the phone number from MTN Uganda which she used to create the Facebook page.
Ndyamuhaki also tendered two bio-data forms obtained from Makerere University Vice-Chancellor and the Human Resource Manager.
The witness also adduced two court orders that were secured in December 2018 and April 2019 before Buganda Road Chief Magistrate Miriam Akello and later served to MTN Uganda and Makerere University before he obtained the information about Nyanzi.
Kamasanyu ruled that Nyanzi has no explanation whatsoever because she was asked to defend herself of the said charges but she chose to remain silent.
On the second charge of offensive communication, Kamasanyu said that the evidence from prosecution was insufficient since it couldn’t prove that the poem had been posted repeatedly. Court has also said that there was no evidence to show that President Museveni was annoyed.
Nyanzi regretted why court did not find her guilty of offensive communication because she alleges that Museveni has been offending the country for over 30 years.
Nyanzi has been held in Luzira since November 2018.
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