N’DJAMENA, Chad
More than 400 rebels in Chad
were handed life sentences on Tuesday following the death of former ruler
Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed in 2021, a public prosecutor told AFP.Captured rebels from the FACT (Front for Change and Concord in Chad) walk handcuffed at the headquarters of the Chadian Army in N'Djamena on May 9, 2021
After a mass trial, they were
sentenced for "acts of terrorism,
mercenarism, recruitment of child soldiers and assaulting the head of
state," said Mahamat El-Hadj Abba Nana, prosecutor for the capital
N'Djamena.
He did not give a detailed
figure for those jailed, saying only that "more than 400 were
sentenced" to life, while 24 other defendants were acquitted.
The trial opened last month
behind closed doors at Klessoum prison, 20 kilometres (12 miles) southeast of
the capital.
In early 2021, the country's
main rebel group, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT),
launched an offensive on the north of the country from bases in Libya.
On April 20, the army
announced that Marshal Deby, Chad's iron-fisted ruler for the previous
three decades, had died from wounds sustained in the fighting.
His death was announced just a
day after he had been declared victor of a presidential election that gave him
a sixth term in office.
He was immediately succeeded
by one of his sons, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who took the helm at the
head of a 15-member military junta.
Several defendants were also
ordered to pay damages of more than $32 million to the state and $1.6 million
to the ex-president's family, said FACT lawyer Francis Lokoulde, who suggested
there would be an appeal.
"It's a masquerade that
follows no law, no convention", said FACT leader Mahamat Mahdi Ali.
"All that comes from a
willingness to criminalise our struggle. The verdict is a non-event," he
said.
Defence lawyers had protested
at the very short notice after the mass trial had been announced just days
before it started on February 13.
Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno had
promised to hold free elections within 18 months, but that deadline was
extended for another two years.
Protests last October to mark
the initially promised end to military rule met with a deadly crackdown.
The Chadian authorities first
put the death toll in the capital at around 50, before updating that figure to
73 deaths. Opposition groups say the number is higher.
The Geneva-based World
Organization against Torture (OMCT) accused the Chadian authorities of summary
executions and torture.
A total of 262 people were
then handed terms of between two and three years after a trial in the notorious
Koro Toro prison, isolated in the desert 600 kilometres from N'Djamena.
The remote location and
proceedings drew condemnation from international human rights groups.
Human Rights Watch not only
denounced the mass trial but also the murders, forced disappearances and
torture that preceded it.
The main leaders of Chad's
opposition now live in hiding or in exile, even though the junta lifted a
suspension of several opposition parties in January.
Despite criticism of his
authoritarian rule, the elder Deby was a key ally in the West's anti-jihadist
campaign in the unstable Sahel, particularly due to the relative strength of
Chad's military. - AFP
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