By Our Reporter
NATIONAL
A doctor who murdered his fiancée known as Desire Mirembe on10th July, 2015 and dumped her body in Lugazi sugarcane plantations has been arrested.
According to the Police Mouthpiece, SCP Fred Enanga, Doctor Mathew Kirabo was arrested by Interpol Kenya, who successfully identified him, on the 12th September, 2023 following a Red Notice from Interpol Uganda.
Enanga says that Kirabo jumped court bail in Mukono High Court, during the hearing of the murder case of Desire Mirembe in July 2015
“As a result, the office of the DPP and the Directorate of CID, processed a warrant of arrest and handed it over to Interpol Uganda, for them to locate and provisionally arrest the wanted fugitive,” Enanga says.
Enanga says that following the issuance of the warrant of arrest, Kirabo was declared a fugitive, populated on the Interpol Database of wanted persons and a Red Note issued accordingly in November 2021.
“All this while, Interpol has been monitoring his movement until 12.09.2023, when he was arrested,” Enanga says.
He says, the fugitive will nowl be delivered to Interpol Uganda, and handed over to the High Court in Mukono, in liaison with the ODPP and CID at Kampala Metropolitan Police Headquarters.
BACKGROUND
Judge Henry Kaweesa of the Mukono High Court found Mathew Kirabo guilty of the 2015 murder of his then girlfriend, Desire Mirembe In absentia.
Kirabo was unanimously convicted of first-degree murder. Judge Kaweesa said that the sentence will be made after Kirabo’s arrest. (Which has now occurred).
The judge relied on the advice from court assessors who said in their report, that all the evidence in place showed that the accused had masterminded the murder of Desire Mirembe.
Mirembe, a then Makerere University student, disappeared and her body was recovered from a sugarcane plantation in Lugazi, Buikwe district, on July 7, 2015.
Her killer Mathew Kirabo confessed to the gruesome act and was charged in the Jinja Magistrates Court with murder before being remanded. He was later granted bail on November 24, 2016 and had been out of prison since.
The case was later moved to Mukono on the instructions of the then Principal Judge Yorokamu Bamwine after the state complained that the crime had been committed within the Mukono jurisdiction.
In 2017, the Mukono High Court said that it did not have money to start hearing the case.
In May 2021, court in Mukono heard the prime suspect, Mathew Kirabo’s application in which he was seeking return of his passport so that he could travel to the United States of America for further studies.
Kirabo’s lawyer, Isaac Kato told court then that his client needed to travel urgently and could not even make it to court. The suspect was, however, found in his car, a black Harrier SUV just outside court.
The family then mounted pressure on court to dispense justice for their fallen daughter, saying that if a date could be fixed to hear the suspect’s application, then they should also fix a date to hear the main case.
Kirabo only attended two sessions of court before he went awol.
