President Museveni has expressed his displeasure at the Attorney General’s office for not getting the killers of the late senior prosecutor Joan Kagezi extradited. Kagezi was shot dead in cold blood at Kiwatule while returning home from work in company of her children seven years ago.
Speaking at Joan Kagezi memorial lecture in Kampala this afternoon, a visibly puzzled Museveni wondered why the AG’s chambers which knows the identity of the killers and the country they are hiding in has not sought their extradition. The visibly disappointed president looked out for the Attorney General but he was not in attendance, so he turned to the Director of Public Prosecutions Jane Frances Abodo.
The DPP tried to explain that Uganda does not have an extradition treaty with Arab countries but the president quickly corrected her that Kagezi’s killers are not in an Arab country. The president said that in any case, even if the country where they are doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Uganda, the AG should still pursue justice to see that the country tries them and sentences them to a hotel “which they call prison” for life if they fear that extraditing them to Uganda they might face the death penalty.
The DPP gave some technical reasons why the quest for justice in Kagezi’s murder case is very difficult and could not answer all the president’s queries since what she said could be used later against the prosecution’s case. The president, dissatisfied with Abodo’s responses, called the deputy head of the International Crimes Division of the High Court Lady Justice Susan Okalany. But Okalany’s backed Abodo’s legal position and in the end, there was no commitment from the judicial officials that they would bring Kagezi’s killers to book any time soon.
