Former Chad PM Slapped With 20 Years Behind Bars In Explosive Hate Speech Ruling

A court in Chad has sentenced former Prime Minister and opposition leader Succès Masra to 20 years in prison after finding him guilty of hate speech, xenophobia, and inciting a massacre that claimed 42 lives.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶

The verdict, delivered on Saturday in the capital N’Djamena, marks a dramatic fall for Masra, one of President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno’s fiercest critics. He was convicted over his alleged role in sparking inter-communal clashes on May 14 in Mandakao, southwestern Chad, which left mostly women and children dead.

Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence. Masra’s trial was held alongside nearly 70 co-defendants accused of taking part in the killings, which authorities say stemmed from a violent dispute between ethnic Fulani herders and Ngambaye farmers over land use for grazing and farming.

Lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye blasted the ruling as politically motivated, accusing the government of “weaponising the courts” to silence its opponents.
“Our client has been humiliated and convicted on the basis of an empty file, assumptions, and no evidence,” he told AFP.

Masra’s political party, Transformers, said it would release a “special message” in response to the judgment.

Arrested on May 16—just two days after the massacre—Masra faced multiple charges, including inciting hatred and revolt, forming and aiding armed gangs, complicity in murder, arson, and desecrating graves. His lawyers maintain there was no concrete evidence against him, noting he went on a nearly month-long hunger strike in June while in detention.

An economist trained in France and Cameroon, Masra emerged as a vocal opponent of Chad’s ruling elite. He fled the country after a deadly crackdown on his supporters in 2022 but returned under an amnesty deal in 2024. In a surprising political twist, he was appointed prime minister in January 2024, serving until May—just months before the presidential election.

Running against Déby, Masra officially scored 18.5% of the vote to the president’s 61.3%, but he controversially declared himself the true winner.

The Mandakao killings are part of a broader cycle of deadly violence between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers in Chad, a conflict the International Crisis Group says has claimed over 1,000 lives and injured more than 2,000 people between 2021 and 2024.

Masra, a member of the Ngambaye ethnic group from the country’s south, remains widely popular among predominantly Christian and animist communities who have long accused the Muslim-dominated government in N’Djamena of systemic marginalisation.

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