A Democracy and Human Rights watch dog Legal Brains Trust, has petitioned the East African Court of Justice seeking interim orders directing the High Court of Uganda to release on bail Molly Katanga who is accused of murdering her husband businessman Henry Katanga.
Legal Brains Trust wants Molly who allegedly killed the husband on November 2nd 2023 in Kampala released temporarily pending their petition in which they are challenging the legality of two High Court decisions to deny her Bail.Molly has so far made two unsuccessful attempts to bail in which she contends that she needs to attend her trial while coming from home due to her grave illnesses.
On April 9th, and May 21st, 2024, Criminal Division Judge Isaac Muwata dismissed Molly’s bail applications respectively and fixed her trial on July 2nd 2024 leaving the 55 year old widow on remand at Luzira women’s prison.
The Doctors then concluded that Molly Katanga requires a follow -up with a specialist ENT surgeon and monitoring of her breast symptoms whose services are absent in prisons. But Justice Muwata stood his ground and denied Molly Bail.
As a result, in their reference to the East African Court of Justice, Legal Brains Trust argues that the High Court of Uganda decided contrary to the National Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy, which emphasize the importance of respecting, upholding and promoting equality, non-discrimination, personal liberty, dignity, and presumption of innocence, privacy, and the balancing of valid public safety concerns against the fundamental rights of suspects.
In addition, the Watchdog contends that the High Court fatally disregarded an overriding Treaty-based duty to revise the Ugandan law to consolidate developments on the right to bail, including by taking account of international law and treaty obligations such as enshrined in some articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Thus Legal Brains Trust says that the East African Court of Justice is duty bound to preserve Molly’s rights from further violations by invoking its inherent powers to temporarily cease her alleged unlawful detention and go ahead to release her on bail pending determination of their main case.
For the avoidance of ambiguity, the Petitioner is seeking a declaration that the respondent’s internal law and authorities must demonstrate a “compelling reason” to deny bail, and that the laws cited and reasons given in the impugned Molly Katanga decisions, are insufficient to justify denial of bail. They also want a declaration that Molly’s right to liberty was violated and go ahead to compensate her.
Commenting about the matter, the Executive Director of Legal Brains Trust Lawyer Isaac Ssemakadde said “We call upon the Council of Ministers to prioritize Treaty-based Justice by availing adequate resources to the regional court so that its judges can effectively attend to such urgent matters, like Molly Katanga’s case, and clear case backlog since 2020.
Molly is jointly charged with her two daughters namely Martha Nkwanzi and Patricia Kakwanza who are accused of tampering with valuable evidence which would have been used in court to prove their father’s murder.
The two daughters together with the family’s shamba boy George Amanyire and a nursing officer Charles Otai were each released on Shs 2 million cash bail more than three months ago by the same judge who denied Molly bail.
