Tanzania charges 61 with terrorism

Sixty-one people arrested in early July in Tanzania for calling for or taking part in planned protests have been charged with “terrorism”, the opposition party Chadema said on Monday.

Around 70 other people arrested during the same period are still in police custody and waiting to be charged, it said.

On July 9, two days after a foiled demonstration, the police said they had arrested 130 people suspected of planning criminal acts or inciting them by sharing messages related to the protest.

“Sixty-one people have been charged with terrorism until today and most of them are our members,” Chadema’s lawyer Rugemeleza Nshala told reporters.

“Chadema is not supporting terrorism at all… Participating or attempting to take part in demonstrations is not terrorism,” he said.

“It’s very dangerous if Tanzania wants to criminalise some legitimate political activities.

“Some people are accused of planning to burn public and private properties and others accused of planning to kill police,” Nshala added.

Chadema’s leader, Tundu Lissu, has been imprisoned since April 2025 on treason charges.

The police said on Sunday they had so far charged 36 people, accused of planning “disturbances and violence” or inciting them.

They are suspected of planning to set fire to public buildings, sabotage the power grid or kill police officers, according to the police.

The opposition had called for demonstrations on July 7.

That is a public holiday marking the anniversary of the founding on July 7, 1954, by Julius Nyerere, of the Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu), the party that would lead the mainland part of the country to independence.

On October 29, the day of Tanzania’s general election, violent protests broke out against a vote seen as a foregone conclusion, before being bloodily repressed.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan won that presidential election with 98 percent of the vote.

When she assumed power after the sudden death in 2021 of John Magufuli, for whom she had served as vice-president, she initially appeared as a reformer after six years of authoritarian backsliding.

But her gestures of openness were short-lived.

An official commission of inquiry estimated that 518 people died on October 29 and in the days that followed, without naming those responsible.

The opposition and human rights activists in Tanzania, for their part, report that around 2,000 people were killed by the security forces.

AFP