A court in Chad sentenced former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra to 20 years in prison on Saturday. The court in N’Djamena found him guilty of hate speech, xenophobia, and inciting inter-communal violence that left 42 people dead on May 14.
Most victims were women and children in Mandakao, in the country’s southwest, according to court findings. State prosecutors had sought a 25-year term. Lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye denounced the ruling as “a humiliation,” calling the case “an empty dossier” without credible evidence. He accused authorities of weaponising the judiciary.
Masra, head of the opposition Transformers Party, was arrested on May 16 and charged with inciting hatred, revolt, complicity with armed gangs, murder, arson, and desecration of graves. The trial also included nearly 70 others accused of involvement in the killings, which reportedly arose from a dispute between Fulani herders and Ngambaye farmers over grazing land.
Masra, a southerner from the Ngambaye ethnic group, enjoys strong support among Chad’s Christian and animist populations, who feel sidelined by the Muslim-led government in N’Djamena. Defence lawyers maintained that no substantive evidence linked him to the violence. They said he staged a month-long hunger strike in June while in detention.
Once a fierce critic of the ruling authorities, Masra returned to Chad under a 2024 amnesty after a deadly 2022 crackdown on his supporters. Trained as an economist in France and Cameroon, he was appointed prime minister five months before last year’s presidential vote, following a reconciliation deal with President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno.
Masra ran against Deby in the 2024 election, securing 18.5 percent of the vote against Deby’s 61.3 percent, but rejected the results and claimed victory. The International Crisis Group says farmer-herder conflicts have killed over 1,000 people and injured 2,000 in Chad since 2021.
