Maverick lawyer Kassim Male Mabirizi has threatened to take legal action against Pauline Nansamba Mutumba the Director Complaints, Investigations and Legal Services of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) for shielding controversial Mukono Municipality legislator Batty Nambooze over allegations of torture and influencing violence against him.
Mabirizi’s threats resulted from Mutumba’s letter dated 22nd April, 2025 in which she declared that the commission has closed the file Mabirizi filed against Nambooze in 2014 on grounds of failing to trace and identify the individuals who violently tortured and violated Mabirizi on the directives of Nambooze as he claims.
“ Pursuant to Article 52(1) (a) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda 1995, the Commission initiated investigations into this matter and also put the allegations to the respondent which response you received and made a counter reaction. However, for the Commission to exercise its powers enshrined under Article 53 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, it requires proper parties to have been ably identified as a prerequisite to the due process of the human rights enforcement,” Mutumba’s letter reads in parts.
She further explained to Mabirizi that the commission were unable to trace and identify the alleged actual perpetrators which rendered his matter difficult to be rationally investigated to its logical conclusion which resulted in the closing of his file.
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However, Mabirizi protested Mutumba’s grounds to close his file claiming that she is shielding Nambooze because she is a Member of Parliament and she wants to use her to mend the relationship between parliament and the commission which broke when her boss Mariam Wangadya trapped legislators including Lwengo district woman Member of Parliament Cissy Namujju and others were arrested and are currently facing prosecution at the Anti Corruption Division of the High Court.
He added that before challenging Mutumba’s incompetency at the High Court, he is going to first petition her boss Wangadya and plead with her to reverse her decision claiming that it is placing the commission which is supposed to protect and make sure that the Human Rights of Ugandan are not violated by powerful and arrogant politicians like Nambooze.
According to commission’s records, Mabirizi alleges that on 15th of January 2014, he went to the High Court Civil Division Kampala to attend a Court hearing before Justice Yasin Nyanzi in a case involving Kampala Lord Mayor Ssalongo Erias Lukwago and the Attorney General where Lukwago was challenging his impeachment from his office as Kampala Lord Mayor.
Justice Nyanzi subsequently made a ruling to hear the application in his chambers and when Nambooze entered the chambers with her allies, she expressed interest in taking over a seat on which he (Mabirizi) was seated. Mabirizi agreed that they share the seat with Nambooze which she declined insisting that he must vacate it.
She insisted that she cannot share a seat with Museveni’s spy which resulted into a quarrel. Nambooze allegedly instructed her bodyguards in civilian clothes commanded by a one Mulongo to work on Mabirizi. He was immediately grabbed from the seat by the belt, lifted up, badly beaten.
He was forced out of the judge’s chambers and thrown out like a chicken thief down to the stairs.
He says during the scuffle, he hit his head on a fire extinguisher box and sustained injuries. He was taken to get medication at Mayfair medical services in Kampala already in coma and did not know how he reached the hospital.
However, before the file was closed, Nambooze through her lawyers led by Abdallah Kiwanuka the Mukono North legislator denied all the allegations and asked the commission to dismiss the complaint with costs against the complainant.
