On February 5, 2018, Tuomas Juha Terasvouri, a Finnish man, arrived at Entebbe International Airport in the company of his male colleague, Suvi Alindi. He was received by his Ugandan girlfriend Faridah Nagayi, alias Mariam, who was in the company of two other people.
Upon arrival, Terasvouri and Nagayi were taken to the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) offices for questioning as it was assumed that the boyfriend had entered Uganda using a forged invitation letter. The duo was later released, and they proceeded to the Pearl of Africa Hotel where they spent the night.
The following day, Ms Nagayi reported to the reception of the hotel how her boyfriend was unwell, prompting the nurse attached to the facility to rush there. The nurse found Terasvouri stiff in the bed and upon checking his pulse, it was discovered he had already died.
Nagayi was among the key suspects arrested and charged with his murder. She was tried by the High Court and found guilty of murdering her boyfriend.
In finding her guilty, the trial High Court judge held: “The convict participated in the gruesome murder of an innocent man by poisoning using drugs and pesticides, which act could only be done by a ferocious beast with a human body…being a woman who had tested her art of sexual attractiveness as a perfect means of convincing a man to invest in Uganda and then rip him off of his dollars in connivance with ISO operatives, and then kill him by poisoning, makes her a very dangerous person to be sent back to community,” ruled the trial High Court judge.
However, Nagayi was dissatisfied with the judgment of the High Court and appealed before the Court of Appeal. In its judgment dated March 20, the Court of Appeal, upon re-evaluating the evidence of the High Court, upheld the 30-year jail term but only subtracted two years and several months that she had spent on remand, meaning she would spend 27 years in jail.
While upholding the High Court decision, the three justices of the Court of Appeal led by then Deputy Chief Justice Richard Buteera, reasoned that since Nagayi was the last person seen with her boyfriend on the night of February 5, coupled with her admission to the same, hence the doctrine of “last seen” catching her as the person responsible for the murder of her boyfriend unless a satisfactory explanation was given.
“By her own admission, the appellant (Nagayi) was the last person seen with the deceased when alive. On the morning of February 6, 2018, she could not explain what caused his death. This court in Busingye Paul & Ampereza Lawrence vs Uganda, Criminal Appeal No. O48 of 2022 and 056 of 2019, explored and applied the "doctrine of last seen",” ruled the justices of the court.
The other justices were Eva Luswata and Oscar Kihika. The judges also observed that although Nagayi, in her defence, stated that her boyfriend ordered hotel food, which he ate around 11pm, her evidence appeared to be corroborated by the evidence of the digital forensics examiner, who observed from the CCTV footage, of a hotel waiter picking up things from the hotel room.
The judges added that even if they were to believe that evidence, it was unlikely that the hotel would be in the business of serving food with poison. “…Instead, it can be concluded that the appellant, who was present in the same room, laced the order of food with poison,” the judges observed.
They added: “The evidence available is that the deceased had drugs and other poisonous substances in his body. Having been alone with the deceased in the same room, and without giving any plausible defence as to why the deceased ingested the substances, it was correct for the trial judge to find that the circumstantial evidence strongly pointed to the fact that the appellant purchased or obtained drugs for the appellant and laced it with poison. He ingested it, which ended his life.”
It was also the prosecution’s evidence that on the same fateful night, the boyfriend demanded cocaine with his Ugandan girlfriend, getting in touch with a special hire driver known as Nassif Walusimbi, who along with her, moved around the Kololo area but failed to get the drug. Further court records show that Nagayi then called some other woman, who directed them to Bakuli where the cocaine was found and purchased from Ms Fatuma Kabagambe and the same was brought for the boyfriend.
