A Chad court in N’Djamena has sentenced former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra to 20 years in prison for hate speech, xenophobia, and inciting a massacre that left 42 people dead in Mandakao, southwestern Chad.
The verdict, delivered on Saturday, marks a dramatic turn for one of President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s most prominent critics.
The court found Masra guilty of fuelling ethnic tensions that erupted on May 14, leading to the deaths of mostly women and children. The Mandakao massacre reportedly stemmed from a dispute between ethnic Fulani nomadic herders and Ngambaye farmers over land demarcation for grazing and farming.
According to the International Crisis Group, such pastoralist–farmer conflicts have killed over 1,000 people and injured 2,000 in Chad between 2021 and 2024.
Lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye denounced the ruling as a “humiliation” and accused the authorities of using the judiciary as a political weapon.
“He has just been convicted on the basis of an empty dossier, on the basis of assumptions and without evidence,” Kadjilembaye told AFP.
Masra’s Transformers Party announced it would issue a special statement in response to the judgment.
Masra was arrested on May 16, two days after the killings, and charged with inciting hatred, revolt, forming and aiding armed gangs, complicity in murder, arson, and desecrating graves. He was tried alongside nearly 70 others accused of participating in the violence.
During the trial, his legal team argued that no concrete evidence linked him to the killings.
Originally from Chad’s south and a member of the Ngambaye ethnic group, Masra is widely popular among the country’s predominantly Christian and animist southern populations, who have long felt marginalised by the Muslim-led government in N’Djamena.
Trained as an economist in France and Cameroon, Masra was a vocal opponent of Deby’s administration before signing a reconciliation deal in 2024 that led to his appointment as prime minister.
He served from January to May 2024, stepping down to contest the presidential election, where he officially won 18.5% of the vote against Deby’s 61.3%. Masra rejected the results, claiming victory.
In 2022, Masra fled Chad after a violent crackdown on his supporters, only returning under a government amnesty in 2024. While in detention this year, he staged a hunger strike for nearly a month in June.
The latest conviction is likely to heighten political tensions in Chad, deepening fears of further instability ahead of future elections.
