Tundu Lissu convicted of incitement and jailed for four years — acquitted of treason

NAIROBI — Tanzania’s main opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, has been found guilty of inciting unrest and sentenced to four years in jail, while a High Court panel in Dar es Salaam acquitted him of the more serious charge of treason, Wycliffe Muia and Alfred Lasteck reported for the BBC.

The 58-year-old Chadema leader has been detained since April 2025. Judges said his campaign slogan “No Reforms, No Election” was enough to convict him of incitement, ruling that by uttering those words with the intention of disseminating them to the public he had “incited the public to disrupt the 2025 elections.” Prosecutors had argued his remarks, also circulated online, amounted to treason; the court said they had failed to prove a key element of that charge. Treason in Tanzania can carry the death penalty.

Lissu: charge “manufactured”; Amnesty condemns verdict

Lissu, a lawyer who represented himself, told the court he had only been charged with treason, not incitement. “The offence of incitement is one that you, honourable judges, have manufactured. You have created an offence that did not exist, and you have done so on political directives,” he said, as quoted by the BBC. He said he wanted to apply for bail, which is possible for incitement unlike treason, and has leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal. If the four-year term is upheld, it would rule him out of the next elections, due in 2030.

Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, Tigere Chagutah, called the conviction a “travesty of justice,” saying Lissu “should never have been arrested, let alone prosecuted and convicted,” the BBC reported.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan won the October 2025 election with 98% of the vote after her two main challengers, including Lissu, were excluded — a result the opposition called a mockery of democracy. An official inquiry said at least 500 people died in the post-election crackdown; opposition groups say the toll was higher. Lissu narrowly survived a 2017 assassination attempt in Dodoma. AB24 previously reported Tanzania’s lack of accountability a year after the poll violence in our anniversary briefing.

AB24’s reading from Nairobi: clearing Lissu of treason removes the death-penalty shadow, but a four-year incitement term — if it stands — keeps Tanzania’s best-known opposition figure off the 2030 ballot. Watch the Court of Appeal timeline, any bail decision, and whether the government’s new inquiry into last year’s unrest produces prosecutions.

Sources: BBC News / Wycliffe Muia & Alfred Lasteck, Dar es Salaam.

— AB24 · Nairobi