A Ugandan academic who was imprisoned after insulting the president was freed Thursday by a judge who said she had been wrongfully convicted.<\/p>\n
Frank Baine, a spokesman for the prisons service, said Stella Nyanzi was driven back to the maximum-security prison to collect her belongings after the high court ordered her release.<\/p>\n
Chaotic scenes erupted outside the courtroom as her supporters tried to protect her from what they believed was an attempt to re-arrest her. Authorities in the East African nation sometimes re-arrest freed suspects by asserting fresh charges.<\/p>\n
Nyanzi, who in a Facebook post once described Uganda’s longtime President Yoweri Museveni as \u201ca pair of buttocks,” was sentenced to 18 months in August after being found guilty of cyber harassment.<\/p>\n
The former academic fellow at Makerere University attracted the attention of authorities with bold, often profane descriptions of alleged shortcomings of the Ugandan government, including for its failure to honor a pledge to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International and several Ugandan rights groups had called for Nyanzi\u2019s unconditional release. She has a loyal following among some Ugandans who believe she has been unfairly treated for openly criticizing the government.<\/p>\n
Washington post<\/p>\n
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A Ugandan academic who was imprisoned after insulting the president was freed Thursday by a judge who said she had been wrongfully convicted. Frank Baine, a spokesman for the prisons service, said Stella Nyanzi was driven back to the maximum-security prison to collect her belongings after the high court ordered her release. Chaotic scenes erupted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t