By Spy Uganda
Nearly nine years after businesswoman Susan Magara was kidnapped and brutally murdered in a ransom scheme that shocked Uganda, the High Court has handed down its toughest punishment, sentencing two of the nine convicted killers to death.
High Court Judge Alex Mackay Ajiji on Wednesday sentenced Hajara Nakandi and Abbas Musa Buwembo to death after finding their roles in the 2018 abduction, torture and murder serious enough to warrant the maximum penalty.
Seven other convicts were sentenced to life imprisonment, bringing a major chapter in one of Uganda’s most notorious kidnapping cases to a close.
The court also ordered the confiscation and sale of properties acquired using money obtained from Magara’s family as ransom, with the proceeds to be returned to her family.
Magara, 28, was abducted on February 7, 2018, as she drove home through Lungujja in Kampala.
She was speaking to a friend on the phone when the conversation suddenly turned into a struggle. Her friend heard screams before the call ended.
Magara’s Toyota RAV4 was later discovered abandoned, its engine still running, with her phones inside.
The kidnappers subsequently contacted her family and demanded a ransom that initially reached as high as $1 million.
After prolonged negotiations, the family eventually paid about $200,000, estimated at the time at roughly Shs700 million.
But the payment did not save Magara.
During her nearly three-week captivity, she was tortured, with the kidnappers cutting off two of her fingers and sending them to her family alongside a video of her pleading for help.
Even after receiving the ransom, the group decided to eliminate her.
Magara was killed between February 25 and February 27, 2018, and her body was dumped at Kitiko-Birongo along the Entebbe Expressway.
Court Finds Murder Was Deliberate
In its findings, the court established that the crime was not a spontaneous act but a carefully organised operation driven by financial motives.
Prosecution evidence showed that Magara was injected with ketamine before being suffocated.
Investigators and prosecutors also argued that the decision to kill her was influenced by fears that she could identify members of the group.
Nakandi was linked to providing the house where Magara was held and to the decision-making surrounding her murder.
Buwembo was found to have played a direct role in the torture and killing.
The other seven convicts were found to have participated in different stages of the operation, including surveillance, guarding Magara, transporting her, collecting the ransom and benefiting from the proceeds.
The seven convicts sentenced to life imprisonment are Yusuf Lubega, Mahad Kisalita, Ismail Bukenya, Abubaker Kyewokya, Hassan Wasswa, Hussein Kato Miiro and Muzamir Ssali.
The evidence presented to court included DNA results, telephone records, digital evidence, financial records and forensic findings.
The suspects had been arrested in April 2018 during a joint operation involving police, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces and military intelligence.
They were arrested at Usafi Mosque in Mengo-Kisenyi, Kampala, which prosecutors said was among the places where aspects of the kidnapping plot were planned.
The suspects denied the charges and spent years on remand as the case proceeded through court.
Masterminds still at large
Despite the convictions, the case has not completely closed.
Two alleged masterminds, Yakub Byensi and Hakim Lugolobi, remain at large.
Their continued absence leaves a significant part of the Magara case unresolved even as the court has now punished nine people it found responsible for the kidnapping and murder.
For Magara’s family, the court’s decision provides both punishment for those convicted and a path toward recovering some of the financial proceeds linked to the crime.
The case, which began with a young businesswoman being snatched from her car and ended with her body being dumped along a highway, has now reached a major judicial milestone nearly nine years later.
The death sentences and life terms mark the strongest judicial response yet to a crime that became one of Uganda’s most closely followed kidnapping and murder cases.
