President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has commended the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) for taking the lead in remembering the late State Prosecutor, Joan Kagezi.
“When you organise these annual lectures in memory of Joan, you are creating a culture of gratitude to the people who serve and sacrifice. It is not good for the country to have a culture of forgetting, somebody has died, you forget about him or her, so it’s very good that you organise these annual lectures,” he said.
The President made the remarks during the 7th Joan Kagezi Memorial Lecture at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds.
The lecture serves as a platform to honour the life and work of the late Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, Kagezi who was shot dead in her vehicle in the presence of her children on the evening of March 30, 2015 in Kiwatule, a Kampala City suburb.
According to President Museveni, before her death, the late Kagezi apparently first got threats from some terrorists who sent her messages that if she did not stop prosecuting them seriously, they would harm her.
“That is what I was told and for her she said I cannot compromise…..That is what corrupt people do, they want to take over the investigative part of the state and the adjudicating part of the state. You compromise the CID, the DPP and the judiciary, then you are immune, you have impunity, you end up like some countries in South America where a person can be killed and nothing can be done. Why? Because the police were infiltrated by the criminals; the judiciary and the prosecution are infiltrated. Therefore, what the terrorists were trying to do here was exactly that,” the President asserted.
He further called for the need for the DPP to audit her group which was handling the 2010 bombing case because they might have been compromised.
“I think some had been talked to and had prosecuted carefully but Joan refused. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about this, that is why she was killed. Now the killers, miscalculated and this is exactly what happened in the history of Uganda in the 1960s when we were telling the political leaders of that time that please let us talk about this, they didn’t listen and, in the end, we had to sort out issues like the way we did which was absolutely unnecessary. In this case the killers of Kagezi thought they were smart; I know the Chief Justice has told us to call them suspects. Now these suspects thought they were smart, but they miscalculated, we have them and many of those who sent them from Congo are dead, we have killed them,” the President said.
“Joan Kagezi lives on because we remember her because dying; all of us are going to die, but the question is how do you die? Do you die doing a good thing or a bad thing? We are remembering Joan because she stood for the truth. Some of those who killed her are already dead because we have killed them in Congo. The problem with us, if you are still armed, we kill you even if you are still a suspect. So, if you want to be a good suspect, come out and surrender. If you come out and surrender from the forests in Congo, then they will have the temporary status of suspects which the law gives them,” he added.
On the other hand, President Museveni urged that in order to strengthen the country’s culture of remembering the people who die on the course of duty, stakeholders should support the families of the victims in order to promote the spirit of patriotism.
“What can support cowardice is for somebody to say that if I die, my family will be forgotten. I still have young children. Let me be careful so that I don’t die and they suffer. That means you and me who survive must look after the families of those who die struggling for justice,” he said.
The President also thanked the children of the late Kagezi for using the support the government gave them to succeed in their studies.
“When we came from the bush, we built army schools where the children of soldiers and the veterans study free and the idea was those people, some are still serving and some died, but let the institution look after the children of those who died and if you don’t do that, you are undermining the patriotism of the people and I’m glad that we looked after the children of Kagezi. She died as a freedom fighter.”
President Museveni also assured Ugandans that the government has the suspects accused of killing the late prosecutor in custody.
