Tanzanian Opposition Leader Tundu Lissu Acquitted of Treason, Jailed Four Years for Incitement
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — A three-judge panel of Tanzania's High Court in Dar es Salaam ruled on Friday, November 6, that Tundu Antipas Lissu, chairman of the main opposition party CHADEMA, is not guilty of treason but guilty of incitement, and sentenced him to four years in prison.
The panel, led by Justice Dunstan Ndunguru, found that prosecutors had failed to prove that Lissu intended to intimidate the government — a key element of the treason charge. The court nonetheless convicted him of incitement under Section 390 of the Penal Code, invoking Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which allows a court to convict on a lesser offence where the evidence establishes it. The judges held that Lissu's campaign slogan, "No Reforms, No Election," and related remarks were intended to incite the public to disrupt the 2025 general election.
Lissu was arrested on April 9, 2025, after addressing a rally in Mbinga town, in the Ruvuma Region, and was charged with treason the next day. Prosecutors accused him of posting on social media on April 3, 2025, calling on Tanzanians to boycott the October 2025 general election over concerns about electoral malpractice. By the time of the verdict, he had spent 577 days in detention. Treason carries the death penalty in Tanzania, so the four-year sentence means he escaped the gravest charge but remains behind bars.
In a statement after the verdict, Lissu said the High Court had confirmed what he had said from the start: the treason charge was "a political fabrication." CHADEMA said it would appeal the conviction and seek bail for Lissu; the court has granted him leave to appeal to Tanzania's Court of Appeal.
Amnesty International condemned the ruling. Tigere Chagutah, the organization's Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, said the verdict and four-year sentence were the culmination of "a deeply flawed process that was unjust from the moment of his arrest," and that Lissu had spent 577 days in arbitrary detention solely for peacefully exercising his human rights. Martha Karua, leader of Kenya's People's Liberation Party, and the Pan-African Solidarity Network on Friday demanded Lissu's immediate and unconditional release and called for an independent international investigation into alleged human rights violations around Tanzania's 2025 election.
The case grew out of political tensions before and after Tanzania's October 2025 general election. United Nations experts said on October 30 that a year after post-election violence in Tanzania, there had been no accountability and opposition leaders remained in detention.
(Source: High Court of Tanzania)
Source: High Court of Tanzania
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：坦桑尼亚达累斯萨拉姆天际线。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0。 / Photo: The Dar es Salaam skyline, Tanzania. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
