Transitional President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, on Wednesday May 24, signed a presidential pardon granting the last demonstrators arrested during the bloody repression of October 20.
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The announcement was only made on Thursday, but the presidential decree was signed on Wednesday May 24. Sixty-four people were pardoned by Mahamat Idriss Déby. According to the Attorney General of Ndjamena, these are the last prisoners from Koro Toro arrested in the framework of the repression of the demonstrations of last October 20.
Their pardon comes after the release at the end of March of some 260 others who had already benefited from the presidential pardon, after being convicted in flagrante delicto proceedings. They had been sentenced to two to three years in prison, in particular for “acts of unauthorized assembly”, or “disorders of public order“.
Those who have just been pardoned were also accused of serious crimes, “undermining the constitutional order and participating in an insurrectionary movement”, according to the Attorney General. They were therefore the subject of an investigation carried out by an investigating judge, and were tried before a criminal chamber, which sentenced them partly to 18 months in prison and partly to 5 years.
But their defense does not give the same figures. According to Me Thimotée Fonessoubo, 108 defendants were tried on May 8 and 9 in ” a speedy trial organized in the prison of Koro Toro in the middle of the desert, and 15 others on May 17 in the prison of Klessoum near Ndjamena. In the end, 30 were acquitted and 93 others convicted, he says, wondering why there are 29 who have been forgotten.
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This new pardon comes a few hours after that pronounced in favor of one of the fiercest opponents of the Déby family, Baradine Berdei Targuioand ten soldiers, sentenced last week to 20 years in prison for having wanted to foment a “coup d’etat” which would have been foiled in December, according to Ndjamena.
