259 protesters released from Chad prison after presidential pardon

The Secretary of State for Justice, Louise Borkou Ngaradoumri gave each of them their release certificate to the Ministry of Justice, according to an AFP journalist who could only see the last to receive them. After more than five months in prison, “the 259 were brought from Moussoro prison (300 km northeast of N’Djamena) to the ministry and immediately released, each returned to their homes”, confirmed to AFP Me Frédéric Dainonet, the coordinator of their collective of lawyers. More than 600 young people, including 80 minors, were arrested in N’Djamena during and after a demonstration on October 20, 2022 which officially killed 73 people, but many more according to the opposition and NGOs, mostly young people shot dead by the police. They had been detained for a month and a half in a high security prison in Koro Toro, in the middle of the desert more than 600 km from the capital. The opposition and NGOs had also denounced disappearances, extra-judicial executions and torture. In this prison, 262 had been sentenced on December 2, in a mass trial without lawyers and without media, to two to three years in prison, in particular for “unauthorized assembly” and “destruction of property”. On March 27, 259 were pardoned by President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno. The demonstrators had responded to the opposition’s call to demonstrate against his two-year extension in power. Mahamat Déby, then a young 37-year-old general, was proclaimed head of state at the head of a military junta on April 20, 2021 following the announcement of the death of his father, President Idriss Déby Itno, killed at the front by rebels after ruling Chad with an iron fist for 30 years. The new Chadian strongman had promised to return power to civilians through elections after an 18-month transition. But he remained in power for two more years at the end of this period, on October 20, 2022, ensuring that he complied with the decision of a national reconciliation forum, which had been boycotted by the opposition.