Academic who criticised President gets bail

A Ugandan academic was last week granted bail after spending more than a month in jail on charges related to her Facebook posts criticising President Yoweri Museveni. Stella Nyanzi repeatedly accused Museveni and his wife Janet, who is the Education Minister, of breaking an election promise to offer free sanitary pads to schoolgirls so they do not have to skip classes. A report on the Channel NewsAsia site notes that Magistrate James Eremye Mawanda told the court he had decided to free Nyanzi on bail after ensuring that she would not abscond and that she would not interfere with investigations. She was ordered to surrender her passport and return to court on 25 May.