By Sania Babirye
Two suspects who were convicted of were convicted of murdering a19 year old Columbian University student Andrew Gatare in 2015 have been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The two include Ronald Mutebi and Godfrey Lubwama.
On the 15th of this month, Kampala high court justice Angelin Flavia Ssenoga convicted Mutebi and Lubwama aka Jeff for the murder of the Rwandan National who was attacked while outside Kampala Serena hotel were he had gone to watch firworks on christmas eve.
The family of the victim have welcomed both the sentence and the conviction while the defense team has expressed dissatisfaction and promised to appeal sentence and conviction in the court of appeal.
The judge had convicted the two basing on the opinion of two court assessors Rehema Babirye and Bogere Betty who advised court to find the suspects guilty of the offense stating that evidence adduced by the state was sufficient enough to prove the murder case against them.
The victim apparently met his death at around 2pm as he was looking for a bodaboda around Nile Avenue to his home in Kololo after watching fireworks.
The convicts first robbed him of his valuables including a black berry mobile phone, his wallet containing unspecified amount of cash before murdering him.
At the time of his death, Gatare was pursuing electrical engineering at Columbia university in Canada and was here for the Christmas holiday.
His lifeless body was found by police and was later pronounced dead at Mulago hospital and a postmortem carried out revealed that cause of death was trauma due to a deadly weapon on his head which was identified as a hammer during trial.
The suspects were arrested after police tracked the black berry mobile phone they had stolen from the deceased .
However, Mutebi a resident of Kazo had sold the phone to a one Damulira at 60,000 and upon arrest of Damulira, he informed court that Mutebi had sold him the phone and he had paid a down payment of 40,000 shillings.
When Mutebi was quizzed by police,he confessed to the murder and stealing the phone with his accomplice Lubwama.