Thrown into prison for no reason

Having been accused of killing his friend and fellow businessman, Samuel Sentambule was sent to jail, only to be released four years later because there was no evidence.

When Sam Semakula Sentambule boarded a plane at Entebbe International Airport to Japan on October 17, 2007, it was business as usual but the subsequent 24 hours proved it would be otherwise. Someone called him the following day to inform him of the death of a friend and fellow businessman, Charles Kalungi.

Naturally, he called back to find out the cause of the death. “I called Kalungi’s phone number. The person who received it was Jimmy, Kalungi’s worker. I asked him what had happened and he said his boss had been poisoned,” he recalls, looking far off in the distance, disappointment written all over his face like a man who is still finding it hard to come to terms with something really disturbing.

Sentambule and Kalungi had met in 1997 in Tokyo, Japan, where the two were on kyeyo (doing menial jobs) at the time. None of them had a solid business yet and they became friends. Later, the two started businesses in Ndeeba in Kampala. Kalungi opened his shop in 2000 dealing in engines and trucks and he (Sentambule) opened his in 2001, dealing in small spare parts and motorcycles. Things were going well, until that fateful day.

On that gloomy night Sentambule, then owner of Sam Senta Auto Parts, felt disturbed and called his wife to find out more about what had happened since he could not immediately return to Uganda. “I asked my wife to go to the funeral and deliver my condolences to the wife (Kalungi’s), in Masaka,” he narrates as he reaches to touch the shoulder of his better half before thanking her, perhaps for the 100th time for being there for him. “But days after the burial, I got a phone call from my wife informing me about claims that I had masterminded and paid someone $10,000 (approx. Shs26m, as of today) to kill Charles Kalungi and Gideon Kabanda. I did not know this person, a certain Moses Semakula. My wife told me that the news was in Bukedde newspaper and on WBS Television,” he says.

As he sips from his bottle of beer, leaning back and shaking his head in disbelief, he allows himself a minute to reflect.
Sentambule is of average build and tall, standing at slightly more than six feet. He is in his mid-40s. His sitting room is modest, most likely humbler than the one he left in his luxurious former home in Bbunga, Kampala. He now lives in a rented flat in the same neighbourhood. The former car importer now drives a RAV4 in the UAJ series which is clearly an uncomfortable one for a man who has driven a convertible, Hondas and ridden huge bikes. He goes on about the events that saw him drop to this status, “That was the beginning of a rollercoaster of events. I was in a dilemma because there was no police arrest warrant for me. The rumour kept circulating that I had paid money and disappeared.”

Sentambule was so determined to clear his name that he returned to Uganda to work on it but instead got arrested.
“On December 19, 2007, police officers came to my office in Ndeeba. They asked me who I was and I told them ‘I am Samuel Sentambule’. They told me I was wanted at the Police CID headquarters. When I went, I was told the person supposed to handle my case was not there,” he recounts.

“I stayed at Katwe Police. The next day, a Saturday, a CID officer picked me from Katwe and took me to Kibuli and he told me I had a murder case and I had disappeared. I asked him for my arrest warrant and he told me not to ask him that,” he explains. He told the officer how he, Kalungi and Kabanda, another business associate were close friends. But the officer told him he had paid a certain Semakula to murder Kalungi. “I told him I didn’t know Semakula because we had never communicated on phone and I had never seen him,” he adds. “The officer told me that he had orders from above and that I should not ask for police bond to be released. They detained me and took me to Kiira police station on Saturday and I stayed there till Monday,” he recalls.

On Tuesday, December 23, 2008, he was taken to Buganda Road Court where he was expected to be presented for a hearing. Instead, he was put on a bus and taken to Luzira. “When I reached Luzira, I contacted my family to bring me things to use in prison. We started organising for bail. The first time I tried to get bail was in May 2009 before Judge Rugadya Atwooki.
“It was denied on grounds that the names on my passport and the names on my charge sheet were different. My lawyer argued that if it was not the same person then I had to be released. I have three names Semakula Sentambule Samuel. I swore an affidavit that those were my names,” he further narrates.

In April 2010, he applied for bail again, and it was denied. The judge told them that Kampala High Court had organised a session for hearing all capital offences. He was taken back to prison and scheduled for hearing in June 2011 when the case was first heard. During the trial, a main witness recounted his earlier statement that he had made before the police and informed court that he had been forced to give false incriminating evidence against Sentambule by security operatives.

Sentambule at this point recalls how he had received a couple of phone calls while in Japan that he suspects were meant to frame him. In one of the phone calls, he says someone at the other end of the line said “Mpa akange, omulimu guwede (Pay me, I have seen the job through)…”
“Then the phone went off,” Sentambule narrates.

After two minutes, he said he received another phone call and someone said, “Omulimu gwa Kalungi ngumazze, tonsasule?’ (I have finished Kalungi, won’t you pay me?). “When I got off the phone, I told a friend and he told me that is how things start. I called my wife and I read the number to her and told her to go to police and find out who the number belonged to. The police found out it belonged to a police officer (name withheld).”

The judge, Jane Kiggundu, heard all this. Her ruling was that the conditions under which the main witness signed were not conducive, Sentambule says, and he was therefore released. His joy was however short-lived.

Sentambule says the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) brought Nolle Prosequi (which means we shall no longer prosecute) and deployed to re-arrest him. In a clever move, the business man called journalists and he was not arrested as those who had come to arrest him backed off. But the DPP had his passport and so he went to pick it, four days later. At the DPP’s office, he met a lady who told him to wait so that he could sign some papers before he got his passport.

Re-arrested at DPP offices
Instead of bringing the passport, the said lady called in security personnel and he was re-arrested at the offices.
“They took me to Kireka office. When I arrived, I asked an officer why I was there. He said I bribed the judge, that is why I was re-arrested. I was kept in Kireka for two days. I was told I had to go back to court,” he recounts.
At 7am the next day, he was taken by Rapid Response Unit (RRU) to Buganda Road Court and the same charges were read to him, under a different date.

“They took me back to Luzira. I was welcomed back by my fellow inmates. That was on September 29, 2011. On October 13, I was taken back to Buganda Road Court and committed to High Court as they claimed I had corrupted a judge. I started trying to get bail again. When I reached court I was told that I had committed a very big offence, and so there was no reason as to why I should get bail.”

The judge then rescheduled the case for March 20, 2012. He was, however, not presented in court on that date. In August, the case was dismissed because the DPP failed to bring evidence to pin him and Sentambule was set free. He got his passport back, walking free again after four years in prison for no reason.

Sentambule’s lawyer is now suing the state. “I have to start afresh like I am from high school,” he says. He has a message to judicial system too. “There are so many people who are suffering because they don’t have the fighting power… I had five lawyers who I paid Shs5m each,” he talks of the money he spent to get his freedom. He adds, “The government has to find a system of tackling cases in time. Delayed justice makes you handicapped. Police officers don’t investigate. In my case, they didn’t even know where my shop was. DPP prosecutes people without evidence.”

“For most of the first year I was broken. I kept asking myself questions and felt bitter that I was framed and I could not get justice,” he says. But he was quick to realise he was shouldering an emotional burden so heavy it would easily break him, so he began trying to forget it by playing football. He used the time to write some prison memoirs, scribblings he now thinks should be compiled into a book.

Sentambule’s is not a unique case as not everyone in prison is guilty. But those people continue to undergo trauma away from active public life simply because courts do not have the capacity to deal with the backlog of cases. In fact, the High Court in Kampala recently revealed plans to dispose of inactive files, to get rid of the backlog – one of the greatest challenges facing the judiciary today.

This is a step in the right direction but Sentambule will still feel bitter at the injustice, having spent four years, in which he could have done so much, in jail.

rbatte@ug.nationmedia.com