Hassan Male Mabirizi, a lawyer, has started a campaign to raise money to pay for a number of cases he has filed against the government.
In the drive dubbed “Rule of Law Fundraising,” Mabirizi asks citizens to perform their duty by financially supporting him, saying that democracy, by its nature, comes at a price. He, however, does not indicate how much he needs.
“It shall be the duty of every citizen to promote democracy and the rule of law.” All Ugandans have the right and duty to defend this Constitution at all times… and to do everything in their power to restore it.All times include imprisonment time, especially my illegal detention without trial, “reads Mabirizi’s short written appeal to Ugandans dated August 11th.”
Mabirizi is currently detained at Luzira Maximum Security Prison following his arrest in February for contempt of court. Musa Ssekaana, a judge in the High Court Civil Division, told him to stop attacking other judges.
State Attorney Patricia Mutesi asked Ssekaana to make this decision. She said that despite an order from January 27, 2022 telling Mabirizi to stop attacking judicial officers, he continued to post disrespectful things about Ssekaana and the judiciary on social media.
For the first time, Mabirizi was also found guilty of contempt of another court order which Ssekaana had made on January 27th, 2022, directing him to pay 300 million schillings. For the first time, he was found guilty of attacking judicial officers and was issued a strong warning to desist from the same.
Last week, the Court of Appeal Justices comprised of Muzamiru Mutangula Kibeedi, Irene Mulyagonja, and Eva Luswata advised Mabirizi to seek a pardon from the Court that sent him to prison. This was after the dismissal of applications in which Mabirizi wanted to be released.
On March 1, 2022, Mabirizi filed a set of 12 applications with different names but all seeking to be released temporarily on the grounds that he had filed a notice of appeal challenging Ssekaana ‘s decision and that the intended appeal has a higher and reasonable chance of success.
Mabirizi said that there are important legal questions about having a fair hearing, how far contempt of court goes, and whether or not the 18-month jail sentence is legal.
However, the Attorney General asked the court to dismiss the applications on the basis that they amounted to an abuse of the court process since Mabirizi had not yet filed his appeal. They said that Mabirizi was a convicted criminal who hadn’t filed an appeal yet. Since he hadn’t filed an appeal, they said, there was nothing pending in the Court of Appeal that the Justices could use to decide to let him go.
The Justices agreed with what the Attorney General said, so they turned down Mabirizi’s request with costs.
Before he went to jail, Mabirizi often went to court to complain about mistakes, bad decisions by the government, and mistakes in the way things were done.
But recently, the lawyer started a criminal case against Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Nobert Mao while he was in jail. The case was about Mao’s recent agreement with President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
In his application to the Entebbe Chief Magistrates’ Court, Mabirizi, in his role as a Private Prosecutor, brought four charges against Mao as the President General of the Democratic Party and its Secretary General, Gerald Siranda Blacks. These included common nuisance, disobedience of statutory duty, and conspiracy to defraud Mao.
Mabirizi says that Mao, Siranda, and others who are still at large signed a document called “Memorandum of Understanding” with Museveni holding out as Chairman of NRM between July 20th and July 27th, 2022, even though they knew that their five-year terms had ended in 2020. This was against the law and caused trouble for the public.
The other cases filed by Mabirizi are: a 2016 suit before the High Court challenging Kabaka’s authority over land; a suit filed in April 2017, seeking temporary orders stopping the Buganda Land Board from issuing lease titles to bona fide bibanja holders; a 2017 petition to the Constitutional Court challenging the decision by Parliament and Cabinet to scrap the lower and upper age limit for the position of president and others.
In March 2020, Mabirizi also asked the court to overturn orders that President Museveni had given in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These orders shut down churches, bars, factories, schools, and other places for 32 days and banned musical concerts, among other things.
He argued that the President had no power to regulate people in the prevention of a contentious and infectious disease through a mere resolution without being backed up by any statutory instrument or order. But his case was deregistered from court records before it could even be heard.
In February 2022, Mabirizi sued the government over the re-appointment of Johnson Byabashaija as the Commissioner-General of Uganda Prisons because he is above the 60-year retirement age and other cases.
This is not the first time that Mabirizi has been fundraising to facilitate his legal battles. In October 2019, he started a campaign to get 300 million shillings to pay for a series of cases he filed against the government in the East African Court of Justice.
Mabirizi then said that the process is expensive because it costs money to gather evidence, do research, and move it around. He also said that his petition challenging the change to the constitution to lift the age limit on the presidency would only work if the public supported it.