Chad: Rally to demand the release of the main opposition leader and former Prime Minister Succès Masra

Several hundred activists from the opposition party Les Transformateurs gathered in N'Djamena on Wednesday to demand the release of their leader Succès Masra, the main opposition figure and former Prime Minister, who has been detained in Chad for almost a year.

The meeting, at the party headquarters, marked the eighth anniversary of the creation of the Transformers, the most popular opposition movement in Chad.

It was held the day after eight members of the Groupe de concertation des acteurs politiques (GCAP), another platform of the opposition to the regime of President Mahamat Idriss Déby, were placed under arrest warrants.

Hundreds of activists, mostly young people, answered the party's call. They protested in the sweltering heat, brandishing signs calling for the release of their president, Succès Masra.

"An innocent man is today deprived of his freedom, deprived of his fundamental rights, for having given voice to and embodied the hope of the entire people," denounced Ngagorngar Tog-Yeum, Secretary General of the Transformers party.

"I would like to express my thoughts for the political leaders arrested in total arbitrariness last weekend, who, like President Succès Masra, have no business being in prison; we demand their release," added the Secretary General, referring to the eight GCAP detainees.

Since 2018, when Chad was presided over by Idriss Déby Itno (father of the current head of state), Mr. Masra was the only opposition figure capable of mobilizing thousands of people in the capital for demonstrations that were systematically repressed, sometimes in bloodshed.

Last August, the former Prime Minister was sentenced to twenty years in prison by the High Court of N'Djamena.

He was found guilty of "spreading hateful and xenophobic messages" and "complicity in murder" in connection with the Mandakao tragedy where 42 people were killed in May in an inter-communal conflict.

An economist trained in France and Cameroon, Mr. Masra, 41, had been appointed Prime Minister five months before the May 2024 presidential election in which he had run against President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, who was proclaimed the winner with more than 60% of the votes.