A Ugandan court has sentenced a young man accused of publicly insulting the head of state in a video posted on social media to two years and eight months in prison, according to his lawyer.
Emmanuel Nabugodi, 21, posted a video on TikTok showing a mock trial of President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power in the East African country since 1986.
The court had found the young man guilty on Wednesday of "spreading hate speech" against the 80-year-old leader, who was held in the high-security Kigoo prison, near the capital Kampala.
The court today handed down the sentence for insulting the president and his family, his lawyer Erias Lukwago, who plans to appeal the sentence, told the France-Presse news agency (AFP).
However, the public prosecutor had requested a seven-year prison sentence.
Emmanuel Nabugodi is the fourth Ugandan to appear in court and be arrested in the space of a week on charges of insulting the president and his family.
Uganda, which has been ruled with an iron fist by Yoweri Museveni for 38 years, is regularly singled out by Western governments and NGOs for its violations of human rights and freedom of expression.
In July, Edward Awebwa, a 24-year-old, was sentenced to six years in prison for “spreading misleading and malicious information” after insulting the president and his family on TikTok.
Activist and writer Stella Nyanzi, who also went into exile in Germany in 2022, was arrested in 2019 after publishing a poem criticizing President Museveni.
Uganda is ranked 128th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index.
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