Kampala businessman Matthew Kanyamunyu has been released from Luzira prison after serving three years and five months for shooting and killing children rights activist, Kenneth Akena in 2016.
Kanyamunyu was initially sentenced to five years and one month in jail but he has served three years and five months after he entered a plea deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
The Plea deal came in September 2020 after Kanyamunyu’s family sought the intervention of Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI) and Acholi Cultural Institution to make a reconciliation agreement (Mato Oput) between them and Akena’s family to find a closure to the case.
During the meeting that took place in Acholi, sources privy to the negotiations revealed that Kanyamunyu made a step by step recount of what happened between him and Akena on November 12, 2016, at Forest Shopping mall in Lugogo before he pleaded for clemency from Ogom chiefs, Akena’s clan leaders.
“He admitted that he will make the same confession before the High court in Kampala where he is being prosecuted to allow him to enter a plea bargain,” a source revealed at the time.
The same source added that after the confession, the elders on the protocol of Mato Oput made an assessment of 10 cows and three goats to be paid by Kanyamunyu’s family to which they agreed.
Under the ultimate Acholi traditional justice system of Mato Oput, the accused person must admit his/her mistake through a meaningful confession and must also accept to pay reparations for the damages caused to which Kanyamunyu complied.
Kanyamunyu and his co-accused girlfriend Cynthia Munwangari had initially denied shooting and killing the late Akena back in 2016 In Lugogo parking lot after the deceased allegedly knocked their car.
Kanyamunyu was arrested in 2016 on suspicion that he shot Kenneth Akena after he reportedly accidentally knocked his car in a parking lot in Lugogo, Kampala and in the process, Akena stepped behind to apologize to Kanyamunyu for the accident, but Kanyamunyu instead lowered the window of his car and shot him in the stomach with a pistol at a close range and according to the family, a postmortem report revealed two bullets inside Akena’s body.
Akena died a few hours later at Norvic hospital along Bombo Road where he was rushed by the accused. Kanyamunyu had since then been on remand together with his Burundian girlfriend Cynthia Munwangari and sibling Joseph Kanyamunyu who allegedly hid the killer gun.
But throughout the trial, Kanyamunyu and his girlfriend insisted that they only took Akena to hospital as good Samaritans, but in an alleged dying declaration, Akena reportedly told his relatives that he was shot by the same people who took him to hospital.
Consequently, his girlfriend Cynthia Munwangari was set free by the court after the DPP withdrew charges against her in November 2020.
