Lawyers for Tanzania’s jailed opposition leader Tundu Lissu filed a complaint on Friday to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a bid to ramp up international pressure for his release.<\/p>\n
Lissu, chairman of CHADEMA party, Tanzania’s main opposition party and runner-up in the 2020 presidential election, was arrested last month and charged with treason, a capital offence, over comments he is alleged to have made calling on supporters to prevent national elections in October from going ahead.<\/p>\n
Tanzania’s government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
While President Samia Suluhu Hassan has won plaudits for easing political repression, she has faced questions about unexplained\u00a0abductions\u00a0of government critics in recent months.<\/p>\n
Hassan, who will stand for re-election in October, has said her government respects human rights and ordered an investigation into the reported abductions.<\/p>\n
Lissu’s international lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, said the confidential complaint to the U.N. working group, which issues opinions but has no enforcement power, was part of a wider pressure campaign.<\/p>\n
The European Parliament this month adopted a resolution denouncing Lissu’s arrest as politically motivated, and Amsterdam said he would petition the U.S. State Department to impose sanctions.<\/p>\n
“Right down to prosecutors, judges, police – all the people that are involved in this false show trial had better be aware that they should protect their U.S. assets,” Amsterdam told Reuters.<\/p>\n
In response to the European Parliament resolution, Tanzania’s foreign ministry said outside criticisms about the case were based on “incomplete or partisan information”.<\/p>\n
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Lissu, who was shot 16 times in a 2017 attack for which no one has ever been charged, will appear in court on Monday.<\/p>\n
Before he appeared in court last week, authorities detained a Kenyan and a Ugandan rights activist who had come to attend the hearing.<\/p>\n
They were\u00a0abandoned\u00a0several days later near the borders of their home countries, and the Kenyan activist, Boniface Mwangi, said both were badly tortured while in custody.<\/p>\n
Tanzanian officials have not responded to requests for comment about the allegation. Hassan has warned outsiders against “invading and interfering in our affairs”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawyers for Tanzania’s jailed opposition leader Tundu Lissu filed a complaint on Friday to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a bid to ramp up international pressure for his release. Lissu, chairman of CHADEMA party, Tanzania’s main opposition party and runner-up in the 2020 presidential election, was arrested last month and charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[504,1405,4074],"class_list":["post-16440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-chadema","tag-tundu-lissu","tag-united-nations-working-group-on-arbitrary-detention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}