The Buganda Road Chief Magistrate’s Court granted embattled lawyer Male Mabirizi mandatory bail after finding that he had spent more than the constitutionally prescribed 60 days on remand without his trial commencing. Chief Magistrate Ritah Neumbe Kidasa, on Friday, delivered the ruling in Kampala and ordered Mabirizi’s release on conditions such as him paying a cash bail of two million shillings.
Mabirizi is also required to provide two substantial sureties, each with a valid National Identity Card, who will then execute a non-cash bond of five million Shillings. The court further ordered him to provide, through his sureties, details of his permanent place of abode for verification by a court-appointed officer.
He must also deposit his passport with the court and is prohibited from leaving Uganda without written permission from the court until the case is concluded.
Mabirizi, however, doesn’t have a passport, and he says he will challenge this or write to the Internal Affairs Ministry to confirm that he doesn’t have a passport. This means that he will not be able to get out of prison today.
The Magistrate has also ordered Mabirizi not to directly or indirectly interfere with prosecution witnesses and directed him to attend court in person on every date the case is adjourned or fixed for hearing.
Failure to comply, the Court said, will result in cancellation of his bail.
The court based the mandatory bail decision on Article 23(6) of the Constitution and Section 76 of the Magistrates Courts Act, which require the release on bail of an accused person who has spent more than 60 days on remand before trial, except for specified offences.
The court noted that Mabirizi had been continuously in prison since February 3, 2026, initially under a separate criminal case, and that the period of remand had exceeded the statutory threshold by a considerable margin.
Kidasa said the court had no discretion to withhold mandatory bail once the constitutional and statutory requirements had been met.
However, the court declined Mabirizi’s request to have the present criminal case dismissed for want of prosecution. The magistrate said the prosecution is conducted by the Director of Public Prosecutions and not by the complainants, whose absence from mention hearings did not, by itself, amount to want of prosecution.
Mabirizi is facing three charges arising from a TikTok publication allegedly targeting Chief Justice Flavian Zeija and Court of Appeal/Constitutional Court Justice Musa Ssekaana, whom he accuses of being corrupt and being conmen.
He was initially charged in February under the Computer Misuse Act with hate speech and malicious information.
That case was withdrawn on April 1st, 2026, after the Constitutional Court declared the provisions of the Computer Misuse Act under which he had been charged null and void because of procedural defects in their enactment.
The prosecution immediately that day of withdrawal, filed the current case under the Uganda Communications Act and the Uganda Communications (Licensing) Regulations, 2019.
The new case contains two counts of publishing fake news and one count of broadcasting without a licence.
Mabirizi had challenged the new charges on several grounds, including jurisdiction, the applicability of the Communications Act to TikTok, freedom of expression, vagueness of the charges and the validity of the 2019 licensing regulations.
The magistrate, however, overruled all the objections, holding that none provided sufficient grounds to stop the case from proceeding to trial.
The court has also dismissed Mabirizi’s plea of double jeopardy.
The magistrate has held that the earlier criminal case had not ended in an acquittal or conviction following a trial. Instead, it had been withdrawn after the law creating the offences was declared invalid.
The court further found no evidence that the DPP had acted in bad faith or was using successive prosecutions to harass Mabirizi.
The court also declined two notices seeking references to the Constitutional Court, ruling that the questions raised either concerned the application of already settled constitutional principles or complaints about the conduct of the proceedings that did not require fresh constitutional interpretation.
Meanwhile, in a separate direction issued alongside the ruling, the Chief Magistrate ordered those further proceedings in the case be conducted in chambers.
The court has cited sustained social media commentary surrounding the case, including what it has described as personalised attacks against judicial and prosecutorial officers and the complainants.
The Chief Magistrate said the volume and nature of the commentary had created an environment that could compromise the fairness and orderly conduct of the proceedings.
She said the chambers arrangement is temporary and will be subject to review by the court or upon application by either party.
The court said the direction does not prevent access to the official court record or rulings and judgments delivered in the case.
After disposing of the objections and preliminary applications, the court directed that Criminal Case No. 184 of 2026 proceed to hearing without further delay.
Prosecution alleges that Male Hassan Mabirizi Kassim Kiwanuka during January 2026, at various areas in Uganda including Kampala and Wakiso Districts or thereabout, via Tik Tok account @male.mabirizi accessed through telecommunication platform of AIRTEL Uganda LTD, using simcard number 0701-881231 published an audio-visual news story wherein he stated that the Honorable Chief Justice, Dr. Zeija Flavian, the Chief Justice of Uganda, is a conman, a fraudster, corrupt, a file grabber and sold off his property to pay a bribe for his appointment as the Honorable Principal Judge of Uganda, whereas not.
It is further alleged that during the same time, he allegedly published an audio-visual news story wherein he stated that the Honorable Justice Musa Ssekaana, the Justice of the Court of Appeal of Uganda, is a conman and a fraudster, which is not true.
It is also alleged that Mabirizi broadcast via his TikTok account @male. mabirizi without a license issued by the Uganda Communications Commission.
This is not Mabirizi’s first confrontation with the judiciary. On January 27, 2022, Justice Ssekaana, then Head of the High Court Civil Division, ordered Mabirizi to pay 300 million Shillings for contempt of court after he posted social media attacks on Judge Phillip Odoki.
The attacks followed Odoki’s dismissal of Mabirizi’s application to restrain the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) from extending the MTN IPO window and listing shares on the Uganda Securities Exchange, citing incorporation issues.
Despite a strong warning from Justice Ssekaana to stop attacking judicial officers, Mabirizi, according to the judge, continued posting derogatory content on social media, including X (formerly Twitter).
A few days later, exiled former Uganda Law Society President Isaac Kimaze Ssemakadde posted vulgar criticism about Justice Ssekaana, which Mabirizi retweeted.
Mabirizi was later sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for continued attacks on judicial officers, which he served until 2023.
Retired Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo described the abuse of Justice Ssekaana as the gravest he had witnessed during his tenure. He warned that the Uganda Law Society (ULS) must apologize or face consequences.
A month later, Ssemakadde, who is still the ULS President, faced an international arrest warrant and was sentenced to two years in prison; he remains in exile despite multiple appeals for pardon or sentence quashing.
The ULS has since refused to back down and is instead calling for an urgent meeting facilitated by neutral mediators to resolve the crisis and restore faith in justice, fairness, and due process. -URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
