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Outlook: Jailed For a Murder That Never Happened

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Mpagi Edward Edmary

24/09/2015 GMT

Jailed For a Murder That Never Happened

BBC World Service - Outlook, Jailed For a Murder That Never Happened

The Ugandan man who spent 20 years on death row for a murder that never happened

Mpagi Edward Edmary was sentenced to death for a murder that never happened. He spent 20 years in jail and was only released when it was proved the supposed victim was still alive

Ugandan taxi driver Mpagi Edward Edmary was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his neighbour in 1982. But not only was Edward an innocent man, there hadn't even been a murder. Edward had been framed after a land dispute between families in the village got out of hand. Witnesses were bribed to say they had seen him kill the man and dispose of the body. He spent the next 20 years in Kampala's notorious Luzira prison and was only released when his family proved that the dead man had been hiding out in another part of the country. Today Edward is in poor health - his eyesight damaged from the glare of his cell wall, whilst a recent stroke has left him partially paralysed. But he remains an outspoken campaigner against the death penalty and still makes regular visits  to convicts on death row. 

The BBC has launched a series called Island Stories - exploring life in some of the world's remotest islands. The stories start off in Khortytsia  - a tiny island in the middle of Ukraine's biggest river, the Dnieper. For centuries it's provided spiritual sanctuary and helped define national identity....it's the birth place of Ukraine's national icon - the cossacks, but it's also home to ancient standing stones and a thousand-year-old slavic tradition of paganism. Yasna Yakovenko, is a Pagan spiritual leader on Khortytsia.    

As the threat posed by Ebola in west Africa continues to recede - Liberia was declared free of the virus earlier this month - scientists are now investigating how to prevent future outbreaks. The key to understanding ebola is to find out how it is transmitted to humans - and why the virus appears to disappear for years at a time. Where does it hide? Fabian Leendertz is working on the hypothesis that bats are a carrier of Ebola - what's called the "reservoir host". When the outbreak last year began, Fabian raced to Guinea to investigate, travelling to the remote village where ebola was first reported. On the line from Berlin, Fabian explained more about his work.

Audrey Walsworth is a world-record holding traveller. Not only has she been to all 193 countries in the world recognised by the United Nations, but she's also the first woman to visit the 321 different and distinct territories within them, as defined by the Travellers' Century Club. Hailing from Missouri in the United States, Audrey sometimes travels alone and sometimes with a group, using every mode of transport available. 

As a young art student in West Berlin in the mid 1960s, Angelika Margull was involved in helping communist East Berliners behind the infamous Wall, receive papers which would allow them the freedom to travel out of the restricted Eastern communist sector. One day she was stopped at the border and arrested. The next year and a half was spent in jail and marked her for life. Today she works as an artist in the vibrant German capital 26 years after the Berlin wall came down. Although she sells well, there is one work that she will never sell. She showed it to our reporter Nicky Barranger.

(Picture: Mpagi Edward Edmary)

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