DPP: Prosecution is not a democracy

There are concerns that the office of the DPP is sometimes used to go after politicians like Dr Kizza Besigye. The current treason charge comes to mind because some people think it was more of a comical affair since he did not threaten the establishment.

You know he swore himself in as a president…do you know any other country where somebody can swear himself in? All those arguments you are raising, let us hear about them in court.  If somebody purports to swear themselves in, what are they are aiming at? The good thing is prosecution is not a democracy. It is not about what people think, for us we have a standard; once we know that an offence has been committed and there is evidence, we charge regardless of whether there is overwhelming public disgust. That is the beauty of this office which is also its bad side. You do whatever you have to do because we follow the law. But just to put the footnote, nobody can use this office for political purposes. We have good grounds for the treason case that is going on.

There was a tendency sometime back for suspects facing criminal charges in courts to run to civil courts to halt their trials. How are you dealing with this?

We have talked to the judiciary and they have assured me that once a matter is criminal, they will let that particular court handle it. There were some mistakes made but we agreed that if somebody has an application to make before the High Court, that judge is at the same level with that one in the civil courts, so you raise it before that very judge. As you have also observed, it has dwindled.

A March report on backlog reduction said there are over 155,000 pending cases where 44% are criminal. The office of the DPP has partly been blamed for this. How are you addressing this?

I am on the backlog reduction committee and the causes are in the report and one of the biggest causes of backlog is shortage of staff in the judiciary and among prosecutors.

What happens is that once the High Court gives us a cause list (people who are committed for trial) and the judge says we are ready to try them, then we have to come up and we either prosecute them which is 95% of the time or we say we want to get the case out because the average time on remand is four years.

This means that the cases they are trying now are from 2013, and since then, a lot of things could have changed. While we were ready to proceed in 2013, you may find that the witness has now died or changed their mind. A number of things could have happened. Ordinarily, once the judiciary says they are ready to try a person, we also move. So we wait for the judiciary to give us a cause list and then we go ahead.

You have just sent some of your officers to Tanzania for the Jamil Mukulu case. What’s their mission?

He was arrested from Tanzania, he had a lot of exhibits there since it is where he was staying. There are a number of things he was arrested with not brought at that time. It is a process, some things were brought but there is always a follow up.

Finally, what is the latest on the Joan Kagezi case?

Investigations have gone on and soon after her death a number of people were arrested, talking about dropping charges- we said none of them is a credible suspect and we dropped against all of them. We have two leads we are following and unfortunately I don’t have anything better than that to report. If there is any case I would have loved to resolve immediately, it is this one but unfortunately the people who did it, planned it; they did not do it randomly.

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