No more leniency, Museveni warns killers

President Yoweri Museveni has said that some criminals on death row at Luzira Maximum prison must be hanged to send a lesson to criminals outside the prison gates.

The President’s comments came yesterday as he presided over the pass out 919 prison officers at Luzira Prisons Grounds.

According to president Museveni, he has been very soft on criminals because of his ‘Christian values’, but this has made them take it for granted that they can do whatever they want.

"I think being too lenient is becoming a problem. These criminals think they have a right to kill people. So, I think I am going to revise a bit and hang a few," he said, while presiding over the pass-out ceremony of 919 prison officers at Luzira Prisons Grounds on Thursday. "If you see the way they kill people, they need a lesson. We have been too soft. I think they have misunderstood it," Museveni said.

President Museveni last signed a death warrant for the execution of death row prisoners at Luzira prison in 1999 and military courts in 2005.

27 people in Luzira prison including Musa Sseburumbi, a Uganda People’s Congress party stalwart who was found guilty of killing Eldard Medard Luttamaguzi, who hid fighters of the National Resistance Army were hanged then.

Presently, there are 278 death row inmates at Luzira. Of these, 204 have since appealed their conviction and are awaiting judgment. The fate of the other 74 hangs by the President's constitutional power to pardon them through the prerogative of mercy.

However, some human rights defenders who have for years campaigned for the abolition of death penalty in the country have criticized the president’s comments.

In 2009, the Supreme Court in a landmark case while upholding the death sentence ruled that the death sentence is not mandatory and that, the sentence of a death row convict is automatically turned into life imprisonment if they are not executed within three years.