Chadian president pardons nine jailed opposition leaders

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby on Friday pardoned jailed ex-prime minister and leader of the main opposition party Succes Masra and eight other opposition leaders.

Deby has led Chad since 2021 after taking charge of a military transition following the death of his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed by rebels after 30 years leading the central African country.

Analysts and the opposition had said that long jail terms imposed on opposition figures showed Chad was sliding further from democratic principles under Deby.

Masra, one of the president's fiercest critics, was sentenced to 20 years in prison a year ago, convicted of hate speech, xenophobia and inciting a massacre, in what Human Rights Watch called a politically motivated trial.

The eight other party leaders all belonged to the Political Actors' Consultation Group (GCAP), the main opposition coalition, which was dissolved by the Supreme Court in April.

They were arrested while organising a demonstration banned by the authorities and jailed in May for eight years after being found guilty of inciting an insurrection.

The presidential pardon entails a "full remission of custodial sentences for the convicted", according to a decree published on the presidency's Facebook page.

With a pardon rather than an amnesty, detained opponents regain their freedom but the conviction remains: they keep their criminal record, their civil and financial penalties and they become ineligible to stand in elections.

Hissein Abdoulaye, GCAP spokesman, hit out at what he called "democratic regression" in the country.

"Arbitrarily arresting political leaders, hauling them before the courts, convicting them on fabricated charges and pardoning them a few months later while stripping them of their civil and political rights. It is simply abject and a very serious democratic regression," he told AFP.

Ndolembai Sade Njesada, vice president of Masra's The Transformers party, said the president had "braved the obstacles and chosen to move forward in the spirit of national unity that is now coming into being".

"We hope at last to sit down around a table to move peace forward," he added.

Deby's Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) also welcomed the "beneficial" development which allows the political leaders to return to their families, a spokesman said.

Like other opposition figures, Masra, 42, an economist, had fled Chad after the army and police opened fire on demonstrators protesting an extension of the political transition under the Deby-led ruling junta in October 2022.

Masra returned from exile and signed a reconciliation deal with Deby before being named prime minister five months ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Deby was elected head of state with just over 60 percent of the vote, in a contested ballot boycotted by a majority of opposition parties.

Masra faced off against Deby in that vote, coming second with nearly a fifth of the vote, but claimed victory.

He was arrested in May 2025 and sentenced three months later to 20 years in prison on charges of inciting inter-communal violence in Mandakao, southwestern Chad, where 42 people were killed, most of them women and children.

Masra, originally from Chad's south, comes from the Ngambaye ethnic group and enjoys wide popularity among the predominantly Christian and animist populations of the south.

Those groups feel marginalised by the largely Muslim regime in the capital N'Djamena.

In October, parliament passed by a landslide a constitutional revision allowing the president unlimited seven-year terms.