Chad - September 2024

In September, prominent officials from the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (Mouvement Patriotique du Salut, MPS), and the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders (Parti Socialiste Sans Frontières, PSF) were reportedly detained by Chad’s intelligence services, as part of a broader pattern of arrests. According to the PSF, Robert Gam, the party’s Secretary-General, was ‘kidnapped’ on 20 September, having been subjected to ‘harassment and intimidation’ by authorities since the killing of the party’s leader Yaya Dillo in February 2024. Days earlier, Gam had threatened protests over the ongoing detention of several of Dillo’s associates. Allah Ridy Koné, an executive of the MPS, was arrested by security forces on 28 September. The reasons for the arrests remained unclear at the end of September, but according to the World Organisation Against Torture, they coincided with a ‘resurgence of arbitrary arrests and secret detentions by the intelligence services in Chad’.       

Sources: Jeune Afrique, Radio France Internationale, International Crisis Group, International IDEA, World Organisation Against Torture