Chad Court Jails Ex-PM for 20 Years Over Massacre Charges

Former Chadian Prime Minister and opposition figure Succes Masra has been handed a 20-year prison sentence after a court in N’Djamena found him guilty of hate speech, xenophobia, and inciting a massacre.

The judgment, delivered on Saturday, stems from deadly inter-communal violence on May 14 that left 42 people dead—most of them women and children—in Mandakao, southwestern Chad. Prosecutors had sought a 25-year term for Masra, one of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno’s strongest political rivals.

“Our client has just been the object of a humiliation,” said lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye. “He has just been convicted on the basis of an empty dossier, on the basis of assumptions and in the absence of evidence.” He further accused authorities of “weaponising” the justice system.

Masra, who was arrested on May 16, faced a range of charges including “inciting hatred, revolt, forming and complicity with armed gangs, complicity in murder, arson and desecration of graves.” Nearly 70 other men were tried alongside him for their alleged roles in the killings.

A southerner from the Ngambaye ethnic group, Masra commands strong support among predominantly Christian and animist communities who have long accused the Muslim-led government in N’Djamena of marginalisation. His lawyers insisted during the trial that no solid evidence linked him to the bloodshed. They also noted he staged a hunger strike for almost a month in June.

Once a fierce critic of Chad’s leadership, Masra fled the country after a deadly 2022 crackdown on his supporters. He returned in 2024 under an amnesty deal and was appointed prime minister just five months before presidential elections. Running against Deby later that year, he secured 18.5 percent of the vote to Deby’s 61.3 percent, but disputed the results, declaring himself the rightful winner.

The May 14 violence was reportedly sparked by disputes between Fulani nomadic herders and Ngambaye farmers over grazing and farmland boundaries—part of a long-running conflict that the International Crisis Group estimates has killed more than 1,000 people and injured 2,000 between 2021 and 2024.

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