At about 9am, CID officers detained Editor-in-Chief Wafula Ogutu, Editor Charles Onyango-Obbo, and News Editor David Ouma Balikowa.
The three were driven to CID headquarters before being taken to the Buganda Road Magistrate’s Court, where they were charged with sedition and publishing false information likely to cause fear and alarm.
The arrests stemmed from a photograph published two days earlier in The Monitor. The image showed several men dressed in military uniform pinning down a naked woman as one appeared to shave her pubic hair.
The accompanying caption said the incident had allegedly happened at an army barracks in Gulu and that the newspaper had received the photograph from a source who claimed to have witnessed the event.
The publication immediately triggered outrage within government circles. Officials argued the image had been fabricated to tarnish the reputation of the Uganda People's Defence Forces and accused the newspaper of deliberately spreading falsehoods.
What followed was a legal and political storm that gripped the country for nearly two years. The case took another dramatic turn when a woman named Kandida Lakony came forward claiming she was the woman in the photograph.
Her testimony briefly appeared to support The Monitor’s account, but prosecutors dismissed her claims.
She was later arrested for allegedly giving false information and jailed. Her death shortly after release added a tragic and unsettling chapter to an already explosive case.
That battle ended on March 6, 2001, when Magistrate Joshua Maruku acquitted the three editors.
The court ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove malice and noted that the newspaper had included a disclaimer identifying the source of the image while also making efforts to verify its authenticity.
The case remains one of the defining moments in Uganda’s media history, frequently cited in discussions about press freedom, state power and the risks faced by independent journalism in the country.