President Yoweri Museveni has pardoned Jimmy Lwamafa, the former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, and 199 other inmates.
According to the Uganda Prison Services Spokesperson, Frank Baine, Lwamafa has been pardoned on account of old age and good behaviour.
“He is over 65 years old and he falls in the category of the elderly. In addition, he has been not well and he qualifies to be released under the terminally ill grounds,” Baine said.
Baine said the list of 1800 submitted in June had petty offenders who have finished more than 50% of their service, all those on death row and have concluded their appeal process, the elderly, convicts who have finished more than three quarters of their sentence, suckling mothers and pregnant women who are pretty offenders and have finished more than a quarter of their sentence.
He explained that all the pardoned inmates would return to their respective homes by the end of Tuesday. Lwamafa was jailed for 22 years together with Kiwanuka Kunsa, former head of the research and development department, and Christopher Obey, former chief accountant of the Ministry of Public Services for the theft of US $25 million in a pension ghost scam.
