Uganda President Yoweri Museveni signs new law allowing military trials for civilians

The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has signed an amendment which will once again allow civilians to be judged before a military court in certain circumstances.

A previous law allowing such trials was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in January.

Before this decision, Civilians could be taken to the military court if they had been found with military equipment like firearms or army uniforms. The activists had complained that the law had been used to persecute government criticism.

The parliamentarians adopted the amendment last month in the midst of a strong police presence and a boycott of the opposition legislators, who argued that he had violated the decision of the highest court of the country.

In January, the judges declared that the military courts were neither impartial nor competent to exercise judicial functions, said the International Human Rights Society.

The amendment seems to try to solve some of the problems.

He says that those who president the courts should have legal qualifications and relevant training. He also indicates that during the execution of their legal functions, they should be independent and impartial.

But civilians can still be transferred if they are found with military equipment.

“The law will decisively take care of violent armed criminals, will dissuade the formation of militant political groups which seek to overthrow democratic processes and to ensure that national security is linked to a fundamental basis. If it is not broken, does not repair it !,”, spokesperson for the army army Col Chris Magezi wrote on X after the bill was adopted by the deputies.

But the head of the opposition, Bobi Wine, said that the law would be used against him and others.

“We all in the opposition are targeted by law,” he told the AFP news agency.

Ugandan legal societyA professional organization that represents the country’s lawyers, said that it “would dispute the constitutionality” of the amendment.

For years, activists have argued that the military courts were used by the government to silence the dissidents, people alleging that evidence had been planted.

“If you are a political opponent, they will find a way to put you under the military court and you know that your fate is sealed … Once there, justice will never visit your door,” the human rights lawyer Gaway Tegulle said Podcast Focus on Africa in February.

He added that people can spend years in pre -trial detention when the courts are waiting for the decisions of high -level military personalities, who may never come, and those who are deemed guilty are faced with more severe sanctions than in civil courts.

A recent large -scale case follows the November arrest of the main figure in the longtime opposition Kizza Besigye. He was picked up in the neighboring Kenya, taken from the other side of the border, then charged before a military court to possession of pistols and tried to buy weapons abroad, which he denied.

These accusations were abandoned and replaced by others, when his case was transferred to a civil court following the decision of the Supreme Court.

Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, described the verdict as the “bad decision”Adding that “the country is not governed by judges. It is governed by the people”.

He had previously defended the use of military courts Saying that they had treated “creeping activities of criminals and terrorists who used firearms to kill people without discernment”.

He said civilian courts were too busy to “quickly manage these criminals eating firearms”.