The President of Chad grants a pardon to about 260 convicted of the protests in October 2022

March 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The head of Chad’s military junta, Mahamat Idriss Déby, has pardoned almost all of the more than 260 people sentenced in December for their participation in the anti-government demonstrations in the African country in October.

“Another decree was signed on March 27, 2023 by the transitional president granting grace to the protesters on October 20, 2022,” the Chadian Ministry of Justice said in a message on its Facebook social network account.

Likewise, it has published the documents associated with the decree signed by Déby, which include the names of the 259 beneficiaries of the measure. Chadian courts sentenced 262 people to between two and three years’ imprisonment for their participation in the demonstrations.

The arrests were framed in what the opposition describes as “Black Thursday”, in reference to the repression of the mobilizations of October 20 and several days after, which resulted in about 130 deaths, according to the balance published by the National Commission of Human Rights of Chad.

The transitional authorities headed by Mahamat Idriss Déby spoke of “insubordination” and revolt after the protests and accused the oppositionist Succès Masra as one of the main instigators of the mobilizations. In addition, they accepted the deployment of an international investigative mission to clarify what happened.

The move comes just three days after the Chadian president granted a pardon to 380 members of the rebel group Front for Alternation and Harmony in Chad (FACT) convicted days earlier of the 2021 death of their father, Idriss Déby, in a gesture of approach on the occasion of the Muslim commemoration of Ramadan.

Idriss Déby died after being shot while on the front lines in the north of the country against a FACT offensive from its bases in southern Libya. Déby’s death led his son to take charge of the country, heading a military junta. Days before he died at the front, the electoral commission had confirmed the victory of the president in the elections held on April 11, 202.

Déby, who came to power in 1990 through a coup against the dictator Hissène Habré, has since won every election and amended the Constitution twice to be able to continue running at the polls, including one in 2005 to end to the limit of two terms, reimposed in 2018, without affecting him.