Seventy-seven people have been sentenced to prison after a demonstration against the power bloodily repressed in October 2022 in Chad, announced Sunday the prosecutor general of N'Djamena, but the Chadian presidency indicated that they would be pardoned.
A hundred people appeared for several days and until Saturday before the Court of Appeal of N'Djamena, whose hearings took place in the maximum security prison of Koro Toro where they were held, 600 kilometers from the Chadian capital.
Sixty people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 18 months to 5 years for minor offenses, including "unauthorized gathering," Mahamat El-Hadj Abba Nana, chief prosecutor of the N'Djamena Court of Appeal, told AFP.
In criminal matters, 17 other people were sentenced to 5 years in prison for "destruction and arson", and 21 were acquitted "with the benefit of the doubt", he added.
They were among hundreds of protesters, mostly young men, arrested during and after a violently repressed protest on 20 October 2022.
According to the government, 73 people were killed on this "Black Thursday", but many more according to the opposition and NGOs that denounce human rights violations, disappearances, and cases of torture.
The protesters were responding to the opposition's call to mobilize peacefully against President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno's two-year extension in power in October.
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Everyone will be pardoned," Brah Mahamat, spokesman for the Chadian presidency, told AFP.
At the end of March, Mahamat Déby had already pardoned and released 259 young people arrested for their participation in this demonstration, and sentenced to prison terms.
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Judgment is one thing, and presidential pardon is another. There must be condemnation before the presidential pardon intervenes, "justified the presidency.
In March, Déby pardoned 380 rebels sentenced to life in prison for the "murder" of his father, former President Idriss Déby Itno.
This young 37-year-old general was proclaimed head of state at the head of a military junta on April 20, 2021 at the announcement of the death of Idriss Déby Itno, killed at the front by rebels after having ruled Chad with an iron fist for 30 years.