Lissu’s treason trial opens weeks before election

Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu will go on trial on Monday for treason, weeks before the East African country holds an election that his party has been barred from contesting.

Lissu, who came second in the last presidential poll in 2020, was arrested in April and charged with treason over what prosecutors said was a speech calling on the public to rebel and disrupt the elections later this month.

Lissu had vowed to boycott the vote unless significant reforms were made to an electoral process which he said favours the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, which has been in power since independence in 1961.

Lissu, who leads the CHADEMA opposition party, survived being shot 16 times in an assassination attempt in 2017. No one has ever been charged in the case.

He is yet to offer a plea in the treason case, but his lawyer has said the charges are politically motivated.

The court has banned live coverage of the proceedings on a request by the state prosecutor, who said it was necessary to conceal the identities of their witnesses.

His detention as well as alleged abductions of government critics in the last year have shone a spotlight on the human rights record of Hassan, who is widely expected to win a landslide re-election.

Tanzania’s electoral commission barred CHADEMA in April from participating in the October 28 election after the party failed to sign a code of conduct document.

The commission also disqualified the leader of Tanzania’s second-largest opposition party from running for president, leaving only candidates from minor parties to challenge Hassan.

Hassan won plaudits after coming to power in 2021 for easing repression of political opponents and censorship of the media that proliferated under her predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in office.

But she has faced mounting criticism from human rights activists over the alleged abductions and arrests of other political opponents.

Hassan has said her government is committed to respecting human rights and ordered an investigation into reports of abductions last year. No official findings have been made public.

By Agencies