On a quiet evening in March 2015, Joan Kagezi did what thousands of parents do every day.
She slowed her car near a roadside market in Kiwatule, a middle-class Kampala suburb, to buy fruit as her children waited inside. Moments later, two men on a motorcycle pulled up. Shots rang out.
Kagezi, one of Uganda’s most senior prosecutors, slumped in her seat, fatally wounded, her children looking on. Nearly ten years later, the case that began with national shock and outrage has become one of Uganda’s most unsettling legal sagas. Courtrooms have heard confessions, retractions, and explosive allegations.
Senior police officers have been named. Yet the most basic questions remain unresolved: who truly ordered Joan Kagezi’s murder, and why? Kagezi’s killing on March 30, 2015, was immediately understood as more than an ordinary crime.
At the time, she was a lead prosecutor in the high-profile terrorism trial of 13 men accused of links to the 2010 Kampala suicide bombings that killed more than 70 people. Her death struck at the heart of the justice system and sent a chilling message to prosecutors, judges and investigators. The then inspector general of police, Gen Kale Kayihura, promised swift justice.
“We shall get the killers,” police said at the time.
A decade on, the promise still hangs unfulfilled, weighed down by contradictions, delays and disturbing revelations. What initially appeared to be a straightforward assassination by hired gunmen has grown into a layered narrative of criminal networks, compromised investigations and alleged abuse of state power.
By 2025, the trial had transformed into something darker: a window into how violence, impunity and politics can intersect. The prosecution’s most detailed account emerged from the confession of Daniel Kisekka Kiwanuka, a former Uganda People’s Defence Forces deserter.
Arrested in 2023 alongside John Kibuka, Abdullah Nasulu Mugonole and John Masajjage, Kisekka told the court how the plan to kill Kagezi was allegedly hatched. According to his testimony, Kibuka approached him in Galilaya village in Kayunga district with a murder-for-hire proposal, wrongly claiming that Kagezi was a judge and alleging she was persecuting Muslims through her prosecutions.
The promised reward, Kisekka said, was $200,000. The group was first given Shs 2 million as an advance. They met again in Kampala, under a mango tree in Kyebando, to finalise the plan. On the day of the murder, Kisekka said he cleaned the guns and hid them in a sack.
Each man received Shs 500,000. Masajjage rode the boda boda, Kibuka sat behind him. Mugonole and Kisekka followed on another motorcycle. They waited near a church close to the Bahá’í temple.
When Kagezi stopped her car, Kibuka dismounted and shot her twice in the neck with a gun concealed on his back. As Kagezi bled to death, Kibuka fled towards Najjera. Kisekka fired shots into the air to scatter onlookers before escaping.
It was a brutal account, but not the most unsettling part of the story. Kisekka told court that after the killing, the group travelled to Kayunga to seek protection from a witch doctor.
For Shs 200,000, rituals were performed to “tie the case” and prevent their arrest. The detail might sound surreal, but it reflected a deeper belief: that even a murder of this magnitude could be concealed.
Then came the most explosive allegations of all. In a dramatic turn, Kisekka implicated two former senior police officers: Nickson Agasiirwe Karuhanga and Abdul Noor Ssemujju, also known as Minaana. According to his testimony, a man he identified as “Nickson” paid them to assassinate Kagezi and supplied the weapons used.
Agasiirwe’s profile gave the allegation extraordinary weight. He had risen rapidly through police ranks from informant to senior superintendent of police and, by 2015, commanded the Special Operations Unit, reporting directly to Gen Kayihura. Prosecutors told court that while heading the unit, Agasiirwe recruited Minaana as an informant despite knowing his extensive criminal history.
Court records link Minaana to a string of violent crimes, including the deadly attack on Naggalama police station, a fuel tanker hijacking in Bweyogerere and an armed robbery at Arua park that left a female hawker dead. Despite repeated arrests, prosecutors allege he was shielded from prosecution, facilitated to secure release, and later placed on the police payroll with armed protection.
The state’s case goes further. Prosecutors allege that Agasiirwe and Minaana provided surveillance and logistics for the murder and later orchestrated a cover-up. They claim Agasiirwe unlawfully took over the investigation from the Criminal Investigations Directorate, deployed operatives at Kagezi’s home, restricted access, seized her laptop and sensitive prosecution files, and interfered with evidence.
If proven, these allegations would point to a chilling possibility: that the murder of a senior prosecutor was not only enabled but actively concealed from within the security apparatus meant to protect her.
One of the strangest mysteries surrounds Kagezi’s personal devices. Prosecutors told the court that her phone had been stolen before her death, a fact known to colleagues. Yet after the murder, investigators returned not only her laptop, taken from her office, but also the phone that had supposedly gone missing earlier.
How investigators came to possess a phone that was allegedly stolen before the killing has never been explained in open court. The gap fuels suspicion about who had access to her communications and files in the critical days before and after her death. As the case now stands, there has been movement, but not closure.
Kisekka was sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty under a plea bargain with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Agasiirwe and Minaana have been committed to the High court for trial after prosecutors confirmed investigations were complete.
The remaining accused are still on remand at Luzira prison. For Kagezi’s family, the progress brings cautious hope. For the justice system, the trial has become a reckoning. It raises uncomfortable questions about witness protection, institutional integrity, and whether Uganda can credibly investigate crimes that implicate powerful insiders.
Beyond the courtroom, the implications are profound. Joan Kagezi’s murder casts a long shadow over terrorism prosecutions and the safety of judicial officers. If those tasked with enforcing the law can become targets, or worse, if parts of the state can be implicated in silencing them, public trust erodes at its core.
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