NATIONAL | The guilty plea Olivia Lutaaya and 16 of her fellow political prisoners turned in to the General Court Martial could only secure their conviction, their long walk to freedom goes on for at least another three months.
The Court Martial in Makindye on Wednesday sentenced the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) supporters to three months and 22 days in prison.
The group was on Monday convicted of treachery upon their own guilty plea.
Ms Lutaaya, a mother of two, has been the poster face of the group and earned much public respect for her resolve to bear the brunt of incerceration in military detention for more than three years.
Their confession, on October 14, was widely welcomed by the public. But it also saw to heated exchanges by NUP leaders as well as divided opinion.
Youth and Children Affairs minister Balaam Barugahara, who is said to have visited the political detainees and offered the 'olive branch', earned plaudits from the ruling National Resistance Movement supporters, but he took as much flak for it, too.
Even Balaam himself would find it hard to explain what sort of plea bargain ends in more time for the convicts who have already spent nearly four years in prison.
A more ideal situation, crticis say, would have been for them to walk to freedom upon the guilty plea and the best would be for Balaam to secure their unconditional release.
But the world and ideal are at such variance!
'Judiciary on trial'
Ms Agather Atuhaire, a human rights defender and lawyer who has been in the thick of the case, said she was happy for Ms Lutaaya nonetheless.
"Olivia must be relieved a bit," she said. What has been bothering her the most is the uncertainty of not even knowing whether they will ever leave jail or not. For that and for the fact that she will be with her children again I am happy for her."
However, Ms Atuhaire said it was a "shame" on the government for "concocting charges against citizens and forcing them to go through this untold suffering, and waiting when they have been broken and vulnerable to force them to admit to crimes they didn’t commit".
The globally celebrated human rights defender said when the state fails to prosecute a case like in the case of the NUP political prisoners that dragged on for almost four years, you drop the charges, you acquit the accused or the courts dismiss it for want of prosecution.
"You don’t force people to plead guilty," she said.
Ms Lutaaya, 32, was in 2021 violently arrested from her home in Namuwongo, a Kampala suburb, and detained incommunicado for weeks before she was arraigned in the military court.
The Court Martial chaired by Brig Gen Robert Mugabe alleges that Ms Lutaaya and 31 others were found in possession of ammunition.
The NUP supporters are alleged to have been found in illegal possession of 13 pieces of explosive devices between November 2020 and May 2021 in areas of Jinja, Mbale, Kireka, Nakulabye, Kawempe, Natete, and Kampala Central.
They were later slapped with additional charges of treachery.
Their charges before a military court has been ruled illegal by the Constitutional Court which decreed that civilians cannot be charged in military courts.
Ms Atuhaire said it was a shame on the Judiciary for failing or refusing to dispense justice in this particular case.
"When the Constitutional Court held, on three occasions, that it is illegal to try civilians in military courts, the Supreme Court, the highest court of the land that we should all turn to for justice, issued a stay of execution of that judgment pending the appeal filed by the AG," she said.
"First of all there was no need for a stay because the government won’t suffer in an injury if civilians are not tried in military courts even if the appeal succeeded. On the contrary the citizens that continue to suffer at the hands of a kangaroo court will have suffered irreparable damage.
"Secondly even after granting a stay, why isn’t the Owiny Dollo led Court hearing this appeal? It is a Judiciary on trial indeed."
Initially 32, the military court has had them capitulate one after the other. Ms Lutaaya and more than a dozen others caved in on October 14 after withstanding it all for more than three years.
