Ono Bwino can exclusively report that incarcerated maverick lawyer Kassim Male Mabirizi and Uganda Law Society president Isaac Ssemakadde have sharply disagreed on his prison rescue strategy.
Last week, Ssemakadde who is currently in exile because of his misunderstanding with judiciary top leadership wrote a strong worded letter to Mabirizi asking him to stop intervening in the work of his lawyers who are fighting to rescue him from prison if he still needs their services.
Ssemakadde has been closely supervising a team of lawyers led by his vice president Anthony Asiimwe who were not happy with Mabirizi’s contradicting strategies including filing numerous applications in court through his Personal Assistants without their knowledge.
The lawyers were also not happy with Mabirizi’s strategy of asking Buganda Road Chief Magistrate Ritah Kidasa Wanyama to recuse herself from his trial citing personal bias which resulted from the complaint he filed against her at the Judicial Service Commission seeking her removal from the office of the judicial officer over incompetence.
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“What Ssemakadde wants is to first concentrate on rescuing Mabirizi from prison on bail then other wars can be fought when he is out. But Mabirizi insists that the issue is not moving out of prison but how you move out. That is why he now thinks that Ssemakadde want to compromise his stand on Kidasa,” a source closely monitoring the case said.
Mabirizi declined to comment on the ongoing fight when asked at Buganda Road Court insisting that even though Uganda Law Society lawyers were not present this time to represent him, they are still his lawyers adding however they also have a right to abandon him.
Yasin Ssentumbwe Munnagomba who led Mabirizi’s legal team this time said that he is going to brief their team leader Ssemakadde and Asiimwe on what took place in court in their absence so that they guide on the way forward.
In the same development, Mabirizi filed another mandatory bail application on grounds that he has spent more than sixty days on remand without his trial proceeding while seeking to be released on court bail.
However, the magistrate said that she will only entertain Mabirizi’s bail application once a decision is made on his recusal application where he listed a number of grounds including accusing her of being biased over the criminal charges filed against her for violating his rights at the Criminal Division of the High Court
Mabirizi was remanded until 29th April, 2026 when he will come back to understand his fate on charges resulting from complaints filed by Chief Justice Dr Flavian Zeija and Court of Appeal judge Musa Ssekaana who accuse him of spreading malicious and hateful information against their respective personalities.
