Tanzania arrests senior opposition figure as hundreds face treason charges

Opposition enactment Chadema said that its lawman secretary-general, Amani Golugwa, was arrested aboriginal connected Saturday.

Police successful Tanzania person arrested a elder absorption authoritative aft much than 200 radical were charged with treason implicit a question of protests against past month’s general election.

Opposition enactment Chadema said that its lawman secretary-general, Amani Golugwa, was arrested aboriginal connected Saturday. He is the 3rd elder Chadema authoritative successful detention, aft person Tundu Lissu and lawman person John Heche were arrested earlier the October 29 vote.

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The apprehension comes a time aft much than 200 radical were charged with treason for alleged engagement successful the protests triggered by the disputed election.

Lawyer Peter Kibatala told the quality bureau AFP that much than 250 radical “were arraigned successful 3 abstracted cases … and they’re each charged with 2 sets of offences.”

“The archetypal acceptable of offences is simply a conspiracy to perpetrate treason. And the 2nd acceptable of offences is treason itself,” helium said.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took bureau successful 2021 aft the decease of her predecessor, won the canvass with 98 percent of the vote, according to the electoral commission, but Chadema has branded the predetermination a “sham”.

It said successful a connection connected X that the authorities intended to “cripple the Party’s leadership” and “paralyse its operations”, adding that constabulary were present targeting “lower levels”, with immoderate being “forced to confess to organising demonstrations”.

Police confirmed the apprehension of Golugwa and 9 different radical successful transportation with an probe into the unrest, which saw information forces motorboat a crackdown connected protesters.

“The constabulary force, successful collaboration with different defence and information agencies, is continuing a superior manhunt,” the constabulary said successful a statement, adding that Chadema’s Secretary-General John Mnyika and the party’s caput of communications, Brenda Rupia, were connected its wanted list.

High decease toll

Protests erupted connected October 29 successful the cities of Dar-es-Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and Mbeya, arsenic good arsenic respective regions crossed the country, constabulary said successful Saturday’s statement, laying retired the grade of the unrest for the archetypal time.

The authorities person truthful acold declined to merchandise the decease toll.

The Catholic Church successful Tanzania has said that hundreds of radical were killed. Chadema has claimed that much than 1,000 radical were killed and that information forces had hidden bodies to screen up the standard of the brutality.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission, a watchdog radical successful the neighbouring country, asserted successful a connection connected Friday that 3,000 radical were killed, with thousands inactive missing.

The committee provided a nexus to pictorial grounds successful its possession showing galore victims “bore caput and thorax gunshot wounds, leaving nary uncertainty these were targeted killings, not crowd-control actions”.

The African Union said this week that the predetermination “did not comply with AU principles, normative frameworks, and different planetary obligations and standards for antiauthoritarian elections.”

AU observers reported ballot stuffing astatine respective polling stations, and cases wherever voters were issued aggregate ballots.

Single-party regularisation has been the norm successful Tanzania since the advent of multiparty authorities successful 1992. But Hassan is accused of ruling with an iron fist that does not tolerate opposition.