City lawyer Fred Muwema is not relenting, following a social media buzz that branded him corrupt and accused him of betraying one of his clients — former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
The claims posted on Tom Voltaire Okwalinga’s Facebook account, (whose identity itself remains a mystery), sparked a wild debate on social media last week, compelling the lawyer to address a press conference denying the charges.
In the post, Okwalinga alleges that Counsel Muwema was bribed by the regime with Shs 900m to compromise the election petition in which Amama Mbabazi was challenging the victory of President Museveni in last February’s elections.
Okwalinga also claimed that Muwema broke into his own offices, in a burglary pretext to jeopardize the same case.
The claims gained attention majorly because Muwema who has been on Mbabazi’s legal side through the election season decided not to join in his petition at the Supreme Court.
The lawyer has now rushed to Facebook, seeking action against Okwalinga.
In a letter seen by Chimpreports , Muwema asked the social media website proprietor Mark Zuckerberg to reign in on the pseudo site user Okwalinga, for posting messages that were “grossly defamatory and offensive” against his (Muwema’s) person.
Muwema said his safety, reputation and credit were greatly endangered by Okwalinga’s posts.
“Since the …content is authored by a person of doubtful identity, I would like his or her identity to be discovered to support legal action which I intend to take against him or her,” he asked.
“To this end I request for internet protocol address of the user by the 29th March 2016 to be able to determine the user’s location, email, telephone address and other user identifier information.”
Muwema went on to demand that Facebook deletes the said post by TVO and stops hosting “the notorious attacker” who is in the habit of injuring names of many personalities of different standings in Uganda.
In the event that Facebook doesn’t comply, Muwema vowed to hold the $245 billion American company liable in substantial damages for the making, publication, dissemination and distribution of defamatory content.
In 2013, government made a similar attempt but was unable to convince Zuckerburg to reveal the identity of Okwalinga.