Congolese musician Nguza Mbangu 'Viking' and his three sons have advanced 15 reasons why the Court of Appeal should set them free after they were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004.

However, lawyer Herbert Nyange, who represented the four in their trial at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate's Court in 2004 and in their unsuccessful appeal at the High Court in 2005, has withdrawn from representing the appellants, just three days after he lodged the memorandum of appeal.

Mr Nyange has written to the Registrar of the Court of Appeal, and attributed his decision to remarks by the High Court Judge who heard the initial appeal by Nguza and his musician sons.

Dismissing the appeal in January 2005, Mr Justice Thomas Mihayo remarked: "In my opinion, this was not a very difficult trial. It was made so by the temperament of the learned counsel who pushed the trial magistrate to nearly breaking point."

Mr Nyange says in his letter: "I have given thought to the learned High Court's Judge's remarks about my temperament in the course of hearing at the (Kisutu) Resident Magistrate's court. Firstly, I believe the learned High Court Judge did not act judicially in so condemning me as he was not present during the said hearing so as to have personal knowledge about my temperament.

"I have the feeling that the alleged temperament and the trial magistrate's 'mood' as remarked about in the High Court judgement influenced the decision of the trial magistrate."

The remarks by Mr Justice Mihayo feature prominently in the 15 grounds of appeal lodged by Mr Nyange, who believes that his clients were improperly convicted and jailed for life by the lower court.

Mr Nyange wonders why the judge did not find that the trial magistrate's neutrality and capacity to conduct the proceedings and determine the case against fairly and impartially was not affected by his being moody and ill tempered.

Mr Nyange, however, says in his letter that there were other grounds for his decision to withdraw from the appeal.

"I have advised the appellants to seek the service of another counsel. I think there is enough public interest for the Chief Justice to assign this matter to another or other advocates in the event of the appellants failing or being unable to do so.

"I tried at Kisutu and failed. I tried again at the High Court and again I failed. In this court, the temperament of defence counsel and mood of trial magistrate may be an issue, and I believe it will require fresh minds to present and determine the case for the appellants and that of their defence counsel," Mr Nyange says.

Nguza and his three sons -Johnson Nguza, alias Papii Kocha, 27, Nguza Mbangu, 32, and Francis Nguza, who was a secondary school student, were in July 2004 sentenced to life imprisonment defiling 10 schoolgirls at Sinza, Dar es Salaam.

The four were also ordered to compensate each of the victims Sh10 million.

This is the second appeal by the musicians after their initial attempt to challenge both their conviction and life sentence was thrown out by Mr Justice Mihayo.

One of the victims had narrated how the appellants seduced her by giving her money, soda and chewing gum before defiling her.

The musicians argue in their appeal that the records of the proceedings in the trial court did not contain a true and substantial reproduction of the witnesses' answers given during cross-examination, and the appeal judge erred in not detecting the anomaly.