The prisoner who is 102 years old

The prisoner who is 102 years old

Felix Basiime

Kasese (April 11, 2011)

It is a sunny and windy day at Mubuku government prison in Kasese district, several inmates, men and women paint the flat compound yellow.

Others are busy working in the fields (gardens), while others are seated waiting for a workshop. The latter class can pick some English and are ready to learn and train other inmates on their rights.

This is one of the workshops conducted by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) country wide in various prisons to inmates on their rights and court processes. 

But lonely in the compound, is Mr Saul Bwambale, 102 seated on a verandah of a uniport, beside him is a walking stick. He is holding a plastic bowl while eating brown beans and posho as several flies disturb him.

He is so weak that he cannot move to the kitchen to pick his share of meals, fellow inmates help him bring food for him. He takes too long at lunch alone as he munches food slowly.

He struggles to lift himself up to go to wash his hands after a meal. He is really lonely because other inmates are between 18 years and 40, he has no company. Due to his age and being weak, the prison authorities say they give him milk from the prison farm daily.

He takes 3 meals and sleeps on a mat like other inmates in the same dormitory.

Bwambale is a convict. He was convicted of defilement by High court in Fort Portal two years ago. He is serving a 3 year sentence which according to the Officer in Charge at Mubuku, Mr Albert Ziraba, will end in early 2012.

Bwambale was convicted of defiling a 17 year old girl in Bwera, Kasese district near Uganda-DRC border but up to now he asserts that the case was framed.

“We had land disputes with my neighbours and they framed a defilement case against me and I was jailed so that they take my land” Bwambale sadly says.

He is not visited in prison because he says that he lost several relatives during the civil war between government forces and the rebel Allied Democratic forces in the 1990s.

“Am now left with one kid and I don’t where he is” says the sorrowful Bwambale.

He wants to appeal after he heard of the prisoners’ rights and court procedures by JSC.

But several inmates at Katojo prison in Fort Portal and Mubuku asked JSC officials several questions about defilement. Several say that cases were framed against them and are not satisfied with court decisions.

They were told that with or without a male sexual organ one can be convicted of defilement in courts of law.

At the government prison in Fort Portal at Katojo, an inmate asked, “Really how can court convict an impotent suspect over defilement, many of us here languishing in prison over framed cases”.

In response, the JSC’s Registrar Education and Public affairs, Mr Michael Elubu said, “Yes, because there is sexual assault of a minor be it by hands or any other object”

At Mubuku, basically a farm prison, Bwambale does not labour in the fields like other inmates because he is weak and old.

Defilement cases used to grab land

According to Daily Monitor of September 8, 2009, court officials say that the people of Kyenjojo district use defilement as a tool to chase their neighbours off their land.

The resident state attorney, Kyenjojo then, Mr Kizito Aliwaani while addressing human rights activists, local leaders, community development officers and paralegals, he urged them to be on the lookout in society for such cases.

He said, “As local leaders and human rights activists, you need to keep on the look out to differentiate between genuine defilement cases and framed ones”.

He said in 2009, court instructed police to hunt for 3 men who framed a defilement case against Mr Stephen Kaahwa, a resident of Karuruga village with an aim of chasing him off his land.

He said that the suspects grabbed a young girl and pushed her in the bed room of Kaahwa who had a land dispute with them but police instead arrested Kaahwa on suspicion of defilement.

Kaahwa was later released after the Resident state attorney discovered loop holes in the case. The girl also confessed that she was defiled but by another person a year ago.

                        Not walking alone

Through court process we find justice, but to Bwambale it is sadness and he does not know where to start his life after prison. But he is not alone in the world.

According to the Deccan Herald, an online magazine, 108-year-old Mr Brij Bihari could very well be the oldest prisoner in the world serving a life sentence in a prison in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur town.
Brij Bihari, a resident of Barahara Mahant village has spent about 24 years in the jail on the charge of killing four people along with some others, Bihari and 18 others were sentenced to life imprisonment for the killings at Bariyapur Shahi village in the district in 1987. Of them, three died while serving their sentence in jail. As many as 16 members of Brij Bihari’s family, including himself, had been named in the killings. The sensational killings, which were attributed to old enmity, had evoked an outcry then. Brij Bihari was 84, when he was arrested in connection with the murders and sent to jail though it was doubted if he could kill somebody at such an age. He never came out since then. According to the jail officials, his name has been included in the list of inmates, whose release has been recommended on this occasion. The list was currently under consideration of the government, sources said. The officials said a prisoner, who was blind or suffered from cancer or had served 12 years and completed 60 years could be released as per the rules. According to jail officials, Brij Bihari is too old to be kept in the jail.