By Rachael Najjuma
25th May 2022
High Court in Mukono has convicted 45-year-old Muhamad Wamala, a witch doctor in Kayunga district for the murder of Zulaika Nansamba alias Mirembe and aggravated human trafficking.
Justice Margret Mutonyi delivered the verdict after finding Wamala guilty of killing Mirembe in ritual practice and trafficking humans to the shrine of his colleague Wilber Ssebuyungo in Kisoga, Nazigo Sub County in Kayunga district.
Court heard that in 2017 at Kisoga village, Wamala with malice and forethought murdered Nansamba by hitting her head with a pickaxe.
The prosecution relied on a post-mortem report by Dr. Sam Kalungi, a pathologist at Mulago National Referral Hospital who established that the deceased had a cracked head indicating that she succumbed to blunt trauma.
In her judgment, Justice Mutonyi, said that Wamala’s in-law Wilber Ssebuyungo who pleaded guilty to the same offenses in 2019 in exchange for a lighter sentence, also implicated him on the murder charges when he testified as a prosecution witness.
In his testimony, Ssebuyungo told the court that Wamala and his employee, Jamilu Kimbugwe, who is still at large, cut the deceased into two.
Wamala pleaded not guilty to the charges with guidance from his then-lawyer, Gastone Kamugisha, Wamala, and proceeded with the full trial.
The defense told the court that Wamala trained Ssebuyungo in herbal medicine and not human sacrifice.
He also told the court he reported the incidents to the police, which didn’t handle the matter well prompting him to proceed to the Chieftaincy of the Military Intelligence-CMI.
Wamala claimed that his information as a whistleblower led to the crackdown on the shrine and the recovery of several bodies.
He also argued that Ssebuyungo and James Kibuuka turned against him for being a CMI whistleblower. Court then established that the items found in the shrine namely 2 pots with what is believed to be human blood, spears, 5 bodies, and a skull buried in the compound did not suggest that Ssebuyungo was trained to be a traditional healer but rather a witchdoctor.
State Attorney George Bigira also noted that at the time of their arrest, Ssebuyungo and James Kibuuka were locked up in different facilities and they did not know that Wamala was the whistleblower and therefore had no reason to get back at him.
Bigira prayed to the court to find the accused guilty and hand him a life sentence on all charges, arguing that someone who has gone to great lengths of training others into human sacrifice should not be allowed in society.
In 2017, police arrested six witch doctors in connection to the murder of Zulaika Nansamba alias Mirembe whose body was found in a shrine at Kisoga village in Kayunga District.
The suspects included Muhammad Wamala alias Vincent Paul, Joseph Kibuuka alias Junior, Isa Walakira alias Joseph, Wilber Ssebuyungo, James Lutwama, and Fred Kizza Ssemanda.
In November 2019, Justice Margret Mutonyi acquitted Lutwama and Ssemanda of six counts of murder and aggravated human trafficking but convicted Joseph Walakira to 5 years in jail after revising his charge to being an accessory to the murder.
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