Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Drama issues as Ingabire lawyers are searched against the law

By Kyomugisha
Umuvugizi
Kampala, September 9, 2011

Drama ensued in court Wednesday when Kagame’s spies acting as security operatives subjected opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Muhoza’s two legal representatives to an unusual intensive search. A search, they say was in violation of their immunity as standing legal aides.

Information reaching this newspaper indicate that the search was so intensive that all documents had to be scanned through while they were not allowed to enter with their drinking water in the courtroom.
On entering the courtroom, the legal aides Edwards Barrister Lain and Gatera Gashabana demanded explanations from the court as to why security had to treat them that way only to be told that it was routine checking. Ironically, prosecution representatives had not been searched. An issue that the legal aides saw as a game between Kagame’s justice system and the spy machinery to sabotage the legal process to deliver justice in a case involving an opposition politician.

On the issue of having their drinking water taken away from them, the presiding judge said it was the court’s mandate to provide legal representatives with drinking water, a practice that has surprised many since it had not been like that before. To those following closely security issues in Rwanda suspected that water was more than what the eyes could see.

The legal aides complained that the search they were subjected to proved that their security was not guaranteed especially if it is the defence to be searched not the prosecution while at the same time wondering what the next move to sabotage the would be.

The mistreatment of the legal aide of the opposition politician is not the first case, Ingabire’s first legal aide, a US lawyer Peter Erlinder was sabotaged into abandoning the case after spending several days in a Rwandan prison and this involving an English lawyer Edwards Barrister Lain is just to confirm how Kagame is in control of the whole justice sector and how he can use it to suffocate those who fight him.

The case involving the opposition politician has attracted high attendance mainly from the government spies who want to identify who the sympathisers of the politician are and what they say about the case proceedings. Members of the public who wish to follow the case have to come to court hours before the schedule time of the case.

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THE ILLEGITIMACY OF THE TRIAL OF VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:07 PM