Tanzania Acquits Tundu Lissu of Treason, Then Jails Him for Four Years

ARCHIVE — Tundu Lissu addresses a campaign crowd in Kibaigwa, Dodoma, 10 September 2015. Photograph: Likumbage / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped for the V9 card.

Tanzania’s High Court on Friday acquitted opposition leader Tundu Lissu of treason, a charge that carried the death penalty, but convicted him of incitement and sentenced him to four years in prison. The split verdict removed the gravest accusation while keeping the country’s most prominent opposition figure behind bars.

A three-judge panel in Dar es Salaam ruled that prosecutors had not proved Lissu intended to intimidate the government. It nevertheless accepted the state’s argument that his words encouraged supporters to disrupt Tanzania’s October 2025 election. Lissu, 58, chairs CHADEMA, the country’s main opposition party.

“Those who are innocent, like me, do not apologize,” Lissu told the Associated Press. He accused the judges of finding an offense that had not been charged and acting on political directives. CHADEMA spokesperson Brenda Rupia told Reuters that he plans to appeal.

From reform campaign to prison

ARCHIVE — Tundu Lissu addresses Tanzania’s Parliament in Dodoma, 2017. Photograph: Likumbage / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Police arrested Lissu on April 9, 2025, after a rally in Mbinga where he called for electoral reforms. Prosecutors later tied the treason case to statements that they said urged supporters to block the election and mobilize rebellion. Lissu maintained that his “No Reforms, No Election” campaign was legitimate political speech.

The court’s decision matters beyond one defendant. Acquitting Lissu of treason confirms that prosecutors failed to prove the case that justified a capital charge and more than 18 months of pretrial detention. Convicting him of incitement, however, preserves a punishment for the same political campaign and could bar him from contesting Tanzania’s next election in 2030 if the sentence survives appeal.

Amnesty International called the process a “travesty of justice” and said Lissu had spent 577 days in arbitrary detention. The group cited denial of confidential access to lawyers, disrupted live broadcasts and detention in a death-row cell. It demanded that Tanzania quash the conviction and release him.

The government rejects accusations that it has conducted a broad crackdown on dissent. It has said protesters, not security forces, initiated violence around the 2025 election, and it denies claims that police used excessive force. Those denials must remain part of the record. They do not erase the central legal fact established Friday: the court found the treason evidence insufficient.

A verdict shaped by the 2025 election

Lissu spent the election in custody while presidential candidates from Tanzania’s two main opposition parties were barred from competing. President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner with nearly 98 percent of the vote. The contest triggered nationwide protests and deadly confrontations.

A presidential commission reported in April that at least 518 people died, while blaming protesters for the violence. The government denied allegations of excessive force. United Nations experts have called for investigation of reported killings, disappearances and arbitrary arrests. CHADEMA has issued a much higher estimate, but the UN said it could not verify that figure amid insecurity and an internet shutdown.

That disputed history makes Friday’s ruling more than a courtroom compromise. The judgment rejects the state’s most severe theory but still criminalizes the organizing drive that challenged the conditions of the election. It leaves Tanzania’s political system with an opposition leader jailed, an unresolved death toll and an appeal that will test whether the courts can separate dissent from criminal incitement.

Lissu survived being shot 16 times in a 2017 assassination attempt. No one has been charged. He later lived in exile, returned to contest the 2020 presidential election and came home permanently in 2023 after Hassan initially eased restrictions imposed under her predecessor, John Magufuli.

His imprisonment now narrows the political opening that accompanied that return. Across Africa, courts have become decisive arenas in struggles over electoral legitimacy, including Somalia’s recent Supreme Court ruling against a presidential term extension. In Tanzania, the next arena is the Court of Appeal. The immediate reality is simpler: Lissu beat the charge that could have cost him his life, but he did not walk free.