TL;DR

• Uganda dropped its first-ever “aggravated homosexuality” charge, which carries the death penalty.
• The accused, a young man from Soroti, spent nearly a year on remand since 2023.
• Prosecutors later downgraded the charge to a different anti-gay offence.
• Magistrate discontinued the case after declaring the defendant “of unsound mind.”
• Uganda’s notorious 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act remains in force despite global backlash.

Uganda Suddenly Drops Its First Death-Penalty LGBTQ Case

KAMPALA — In a dramatic courtroom turn, Uganda has tossed out its first-ever case under the country’s brutal “aggravated homosexuality” charge—an offence so extreme it carries the death penalty. The accused, a young man from Soroti, had already spent nearly a year behind bars after being arrested in August 2023, only to have the case dissolved on Monday when a magistrate deemed him “of unsound mind” after his long detention.

The case was the first test of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, enacted in 2023 despite outrage from international human-rights organizations, Western governments, and LGBTQ communities worldwide. Critics call it one of the harshest anti-gay laws on Earth, a law that criminalizes consensual relationships with life imprisonment and reserves the death penalty for so-called “aggravated” cases—repeat encounters, age gaps, disabilities, or transmission of terminal illness. In other words, the law is designed to terrify LGBTQ Ugandans into silence or exile.

According to the indictment, prosecutors claimed the defendant engaged in “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a 41-year-old man. As the case dragged for more than two years, authorities quietly walked back the death-penalty charge and replaced it with a colonial-era offence: “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” another anti-gay provision still lingering in Uganda’s penal code. But on Monday, the prosecution’s entire effort came crashing down. With no written ruling yet, only an oral dismissal, even the judiciary’s spokesperson seemed caught off guard.

Uganda’s Government Faces Intensifying Global Heat

Uganda’s 2023 law was an international bombshell. The World Bank froze new lending, the U.S. slapped visa restrictions, and rights groups warned that the country had effectively legalized persecution. President Yoweri Museveni’s government shrugged off the pressure, framing the law as a defense of “African values” while ignoring the basic human rights its own citizens are entitled to under both domestic and international norms.

Authorities insist LGBTQ people are not at risk—an assertion that rings hollow to anyone who has watched Uganda’s political rhetoric escalate into open hostility. The mere existence of the new law has unleashed surges of violence, harassment, and forced outings across the country, creating a climate where queer Ugandans live in perpetual fear. This latest case, even dismissed, does nothing to calm those fears. If anything, it proves how easily the state is willing to treat LGBTQ identities as crimes and experiments in legal cruelty.

What the Acquittal Means for LGBTQ Ugandans

While the dismissal spares this young man from a potential death sentence, it offers no relief to the wider LGBTQ community, which remains trapped under a law designed to erase them. Human-rights observers say the sudden closure of the case raises troubling questions: Was it dropped to avoid international scrutiny? Was the finding of “unsound mind” used as a convenient exit? And if the first test case collapsed this quickly, why does the law remain?

For LGBTQ Ugandans, the message is bittersweet. One life may have been pulled back from the brink, but the machinery of state-sponsored homophobia continues grinding forward. The Anti-Homosexuality Act still stands. Police still make arrests. Families still face pressure to turn in relatives. And queer people still live every day knowing their identity alone could trigger charges that carry life imprisonment—or worse.

Global advocates say this is precisely why the law must be dismantled entirely. Until then, every LGBTQ Ugandan remains at risk, and every courtroom decision—dropped case or not—reminds the world that Uganda is a dangerous place to be queer.