N’DJAMENA: Two leading figures in Chadian civil society, including a rights activist and an outspoken critic of the long-ruling Deby family, were released on Thursday, people close to both men told AFP.
Baradine Berdei Targuio, president of the Chadian Organization for Human Rights, was released after five months in custody and returned home by the country’s all-powerful intelligence service, according to his brother Hamit Berdei Targuio.
And Badour Oumar Ali, the editor-in-chief of the country’s leading online news site Tchadinfos.com, was released on Thursday after 24 hours in custody, Mamadou Djimtebaye, Tchadinfos’ director general, told AFP.
Berdei Targui’s arrest in March came days after opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou was killed when soldiers surrounded the office of his Socialist Party without Borders in the capital N’Djamena.
Denounced by the opposition as an “assassination”, two months before the presidential election, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, son of Idriss Deby Itno, who ruled Chad with an iron fist for three decades, won comfortably.
In the Zaghawa ethnic community, to which the activist and Deba Itno’s family belong, audio messages attributed to Berdei Targuia have circulated calling for people to avenge the death of Yaya Dillo.
Berdei Targuio already served time in prison between 2020 and 2021 for threatening “constitutional order” before the younger Deby Itno pardoned him.
He was arrested again in December 2022, with some army officers accused of plotting a coup, before being pardoned again in June last year.
Chad’s online media organization said Oumar Ali was taken away in an unmarked car by hooded armed men and then interrogated for 24 hours at intelligence offices.
The younger Deby Itno was elected president in May with more than 60 percent of the vote in disputed elections boycotted by the opposition.
In 2021, he was declared interim president after his father was killed by rebels.
