Buganda Road Court Chief Magistrate Jameson Karemani has this morning acquitted four journalists and convicted city business man Segawa Juma Tamale on defamation charges.
The scribes are Benon Tugumuzirize, Ronald Nahabwe who formerly worked at Red Pepper on the crime desk.
Others are Madinah Nalwanga and Patrick Tumwesigye from Vision Group.
Prosecution avers that the accused published defamatory stories against businessmen Ephraim Ntaganda and Drake Lubega.
In May 2015 in their various newspapers published defamatory content that Ntaganda and Lubega were trailing to kill Juma Tamale.
In his ruling today however, the magistrate pointed out that the journalists in their defense admitted to have published the stories, but didn’t take time to investigate their tips sent to them by Tamale.
The magistrate deduced that verification of the stories was not the role for the reporters but their editors who were not among the accused persons.
Tamale on the other hand however, was convicted for sending out these unfounded allegations to the reporters.
On the issue of defaming Drake Lubega, all the five accused persons were acquitted since drake didn’t come to testify in court.
The state prosecutor Peter Mugisha asked court to hand Segawa a 2year custodial sentence because he damaged Ntaganda’s image among his peers which cannot easily be regained.
In reply to this, the defense counsel Ibrahim Kivumbi opposed this request and asked court for a lenient sentence for his client, being a first offender and his family’s bread winner.
“I pray that this honorable court finds it appropriate to hand the convict with a non-custodial sentence by subjecting him to a fine and in case a custodial sentence is to be granted I pray that it gives him 1 month imprisonment sentence,” submitted Kivumbi.
Segawa’s bail was cancelled and he was remanded to Luzira ahead of tomorrow’s sentencing.
Additional reporting from Chimpreports.com
