Court Report as 0f 25th –July -2007

Today at Buganda road court, The prosecution desk produced a new prosecutor who was asking the judge to be given more time to study the case file and get acquitted to the case before they could proceed. The presiding Magistrate refused citing reason that the file has been in the prosecution office for enough time for the prosecutor to have looked through and so she (magistrate) ordered him to proceed with cross examining the present witness.

The prosecution produced their 2nd witness in this case by the names of sergeant Malenge Kamya aged 49yrs attached to the central police station Kampala

When asked if he knew the matter before court, the witness sergeant Malenge admitted that he knew it, how he knew about the case? He was the "In charge" at the Police post that was set at Grand Imperial hotel during the HIV/AIDS implementers meeting

The witness said that when he got a call that there were 3 people disrupting the conference, he sent his CIDs to investigate and they came back with the three Val, Auf & Pepe and that's when he realized that these people were carrying placards which were written on the following statements "gays are also Ugandans" and "No single fee has been allocated to gays…."

The witness was asked if he knew the defendants before court and he admitted that he knew them when asked to Identify them by their names and he went on to do so, Pointing at Pepe and calling him/er Valentine Kalende and vice verser.

The Defence counsel asked the witness who the complainant in this case was and the witness answered that it was him and the state.

When asked if he knew the organizers of the conference he admitted that he knew them, when asked if he took statements from the organizers of the conference the sergeant said he had no authority to do so he just handed the accused to the O.C CID who took them to the central police station.

The Defence attorney informed the witness that one of the representatives of UNAIDS recorded a statement with the police, when asked if he knew about that statement he denied.

The counsel produced two documents one from UNAIDS headquarters and one from the United states Embassy and in particular from the ambassador of the united states of America which the sergeant denied that he didn't know of them at all that that was the first time he was seeing them. These documents verified the invitations awarded to the defendants to attend the conference.

The defence attorney closed by putting it to the state witness that the state and the police were just hosts of the conference and not the organizers so they were just torturing these young activists. (The accused)

The presiding magistrate asked the state witness the following questions for clarification.

* Do you consider yourself a complainant in this case? Witness answered yes.

* How many levels of security did you have at the Hotel for that day? Witness answered. 1 at the hotel entrance and 1 at the conference hall entrance.

* How come these beat the security levels? Witness answered that he didn't know how they beat the security in fact that's what annoyed him so much as the in charge of security at the hotel for the conference.

The prosecution asked the magistrate to adjourn the next hearing to the 20th –Sept – 2008 because they have a a lot of cases in between there, which the magistrate refused.

The case was adjourned to the 1st of August 2008 at 9:00am.