A Tanzanian court has sentenced opposition leader Tundu Lissu to four years in prison on a charge of incitement, while dropping a treason charge that carried the possibility of a death sentence. The ruling was delivered on Friday by a three-judge panel in Dar-es-Salaam, in a trial that has drawn close attention internationally.
One judge told a courtroom packed with Lissu’s supporters that the court was satisfied he had used his statements to disrupt elections and stir up violence. “We sentence you to four years in prison, but the doors are open for appeal,” the judge added. Lissu heads Chadema, the country’s main opposition party.
Court rejects treason charge against Lissu
Treason is the capital crime in Tanzania’s penal code, so the decision to dismiss that count stood out. Tito Magoti, a human rights lawyer based in Oxford, UK, called the outcome “a major blow” for the state. He told that the dropped charge suggested the aim had never really been a treason conviction, but rather to keep Lissu behind bars.
The case also drew criticism from British and European Union lawmakers, who described it as politically motivated and called for Lissu’s immediate release. It marked the third high-profile treason trial in mainland Tanzania’s history. The first two, in the 1970s and 1980s, involved defendants accused of plotting to overthrow and assassinate the country’s founding president, Julius Nyerere.
Lissu accuses judges of following government orders
Lissu responded that the trial was “political persecution” and accused the judges of acting on orders from the government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan. “Excuses were created to imprison me,” he told the court.
He also said he had not been charged with incitement, yet the judges were convicting him on that basis to please those who had given them their positions. “I believe these were directives,” he said.
Security was heightened across Dar-es-Salaam, the country’s commercial capital, and around the court before the verdict, as Lissu’s supporters gathered for the hearing. This was the first time Lissu, 58, had faced such serious charges, despite being arrested several times before.
He has a history with violence as well. In 2017 he survived an assassination attempt in which he was shot 16 times. He believes that attack was politically motivated, and it required nearly 20 surgeries.
Crackdown before the October 2025 presidential vote
Lissu was arrested before the October 2025 presidential election, at a time when the government was carrying out a wave of detentions and abductions targeting opponents and critics. That clampdown sparked large protests during the vote, which Hassan was declared to have won with 98 percent of the ballot.
Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, according to the opposition and rights groups. The government put the death toll at 518.
A correspondent reporting from Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya said many people in Tanzania are afraid to speak out, particularly over the past two years. Critics have been jailed, others silenced or forced to leave the country, and media freedoms curtailed. The correspondent also noted that a figure from Lissu’s party had been arrested and charged with treason the previous week, adding that many of the charges were seen by some people off camera as politically motivated.
