Full Speech: Besigye finally addresses High Court, petitions JSC to fire Justice Baguma

Col Dr Kizza Besigye was on Wednesday granted the opportunity to address the Kampala High Court about his ordeal in detention, where he has been together with his colleague Obeid Kamulegeya Lutale for 327 days to date.

His address followed last week’s showdown at the court, where Justice Emmanuel Baguma initially addressed his concerns through his lawyers.

His address today was mostly directly at the judge, whom he described as ‘grossly incompetent and biased.’

He also revealed that he had officially filed a complaint before the Uganda Judicial Service Commission that seeks to have the judge terminated.

Below is Dr Besigye’s slightly edited address

I am grateful that you granted us this chance to address you. I hope you appreciate that if I want to communicate my anguish…anguish cannot be written. It can only be seen on me. It is important the people see how I feel

My first concern, for purposes of giving a background, we visited Nairobi on 16th November last year; it was a normal visit through our airport in Uganda. While there we were grabbed by armed men and told that we were under arrest.

We were bundled into a vehicle and apart from a short stop at a petrol station for a refill, we were driven up to the Ugandan border where we were put in another car and taken to Makindye Barracks. We were detained in military barracks and held for 4 days although we are not soldiers.

From here we were produced in the military court of law, which had been declared unconstitutional several times by the Constitutional Court. It is that court that remanded us to Luzira Prison where we still are. The court was later on in January conclusively declared unconstitutional and scrapped.

We nonetheless remained in illegal custody after the court was scrapped, since the remand warrant had expired. We had expected, if the state still wanted to charge us,  to be taken to a police station and processed afresh.

This was until February this year when we were charged in Nakawa. It is the Nakawa court that indicted us on May 29th and deferred us to the International Crimes Division of the High Court, which is very different from this court by processes and composition. It would therefore seem that one year down the road, we are in yet another wrong court.

We don't know if this is part of the process of delaying this matter. The second matter is that before the summons and warrant to bring us for this trial, we appeared before you in the matter of our application for mandatory bail. Arising out your ruling, which seriously stunned us, you indicated that the court was not aware of matters to do with our earlier changes before the court martial; that there was no record of the charge sheet or a case number, and that all that was available to you was the case of Nakawa.

This was very disturbing because not only were all the documents and details of the general court martial process filed with our application, the very affidavit that we swore indicated how we had been arrested in Nairobi, charged and remanded in the court martial.

Sections of the affidavit that I am referring to were not contested by this court. On top of that, our lawyers in court gave extensive reference to those very documents. We considered that your handling of our application either showed that you are grossly incompetent and did not read what was filed before you or that you are biased; both of which are very serious matters.

We consider the court to be a temple of justice. We were compelled to file a complaint against you in the Uganda Judicial Service Commission and we have not received notification about that complaint from the commission.

In your ruling you said it was your considered view that priority be given the hearing of the main case other than the bail application In other words you have your own view on our bail applications. Today we are filing another bail application 

We therefore wish to hear from you, first of all, on why  we are before this court and not the international crimes division where we were sent; and secondly, whether in light of our complaint against you which seeks to remove you from the office of judge… whether in those circumstances you might consider it prudent to continue with the process of establishing justice for us. We are grateful that you have allowed us to present these concerns