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Court dismisses November 2020 riot case in which over 50 Ugandans died

High Court has dismissed an application by two law students from Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU) who say the use of deadly and excessive by police to ensure crowd control is illegal.

The judge said the petition was filed in the wrong court, adding that the applicants should have petitioned the Constitutional Court.

The High Court Civil Division Judge Musa Ssekaana dismissed the application filed by Derrick Okello Wamboga and Joel Jerry Walyono when the matter came up for hearing.

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Ssekaana said the petition was filed in the wrong court, adding that the applicants should have petitioned the Constitutional Court.

The Judicature Fundamental and other Human Rights and Freedoms Enforcement Procedures, 2019 provide that any matter brought for the enforcement of rights in the public interest must be filed in the Constitutional Court”, said Ssekaana, before dismissing the case.

He however didn’t make any rulings on the costs of the petition.

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The Attorney General was not represented in court.

Wamboga and Walyono took their petition to the High Court following the November 18 and 19 2020 riots.

These riots were touched off by the arrest of the former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine, who had been arrested in Luuka district before later being released without charge.

A special report released by government investigating the November 2020 riots revealed that 39 out of the 54 of the people shot dead during the riots were hit by "stray bullets".

The then Police Criminal Investigations Director, AIGP Grace Akullo, prepared this report and presented it to the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Martins Okoth-Ochola, on December 5, 2020.

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Only eight of those shot dead were "rioters", it was later revealed, contrary to earlier briefings by President Museveni who, during a televised address on November 29 2020, said 32 individuals who were shot dead by security forces were "rioters".

The two petitioners said during Uganda’s electoral cycles, namely 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021, security agencies have used excessive and deadly force to disperse rallies.

That indeed such arbitrariness and use of lethal force or weapons by the security agencies to disperse allegedly unlawful assemblies is an outright violation of the right of assembly, protest, life,” reads their joint affidavit.

The two petitioners listed the Attorney General, Inspector General of Police, and Chief of Defense Forces as the respondents to their petition.

They asked the court to declare that the arbitrary dispersal of assemblies, whether they be lawful or unlawful, is a violation of the right to life, freedom of assembly, and right to protest enshrined in the Constitution of Uganda.

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On August 19, 2021, however, the Attorney General through State Attorney Mark Muwonge asked court to dismiss the two petitioner’s case for lack of merit.

That the applicants have not attached any evidence to prove that any officer belonging to the 2nd and 3rd respondents (IGP and CDF respectively) committed the alleged offences while in the course of their employment. There is no force of number or name of any officer alleged to have committed any of the alleged offences,” reads Muwonge’s affidavit.

The two petitioners, after the court decision, said that they would reveal their next course of action and might have to take the case to another court, the Constitutional Court, as recommended by the judge.

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