Tanzania's Tundu Lissu acquitted of treason but found guilty of incitement and sentenced to four years in prison
A Tanzanian High Court has acquitted opposition leader Tundu Lissu of treason but found him guilty of incitement and sentenced him to four years in prison. The three-judge bench in Dar es Salaam ruled on Friday that the prosecution had failed to establish an essential element of treason — the intention to threaten or intimidate the government — in Lissu's April 2025 speech, in which prosecutors said he told supporters the opposition would 'block the election' and 'mobilise rebellion'. The court found the same statements incited people to disrupt the electoral process. Lissu, 58, chairman of the main opposition party CHADEMA, has been in custody since April 2025; he pleaded not guilty, represented himself for much of the trial, and says the case was politically motivated. Treason carries the death penalty in Tanzania; the incitement sentence is four years, against a five-year maximum the state attorney cited.
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Key points
- Acquitted of treason: the court found the prosecution had not established the intention to threaten or intimidate the government — an essential element of an offence that carries the death penalty.
- Guilty of incitement: the same April 2025 speech was found to have incited disruption of the electoral process, and Lissu was sentenced to four years in prison.
- Lissu, CHADEMA's chairman, has been in custody since April 2025 and says the case was political; the government denies targeting opponents.
- An appeal to the Court of Appeal is open to him; he has also sought bail pending appeal, with no outcome reported yet.
What happened
CHADEMA was disqualified from Tanzania's 29 October 2025 election for refusing to sign the electoral code of conduct, after its 'No Reforms, No Election' campaign demanded, among other things, independently appointed electoral commissioners and the right to challenge presidential results in court. President Samia Suluhu Hassan of the ruling CCM won with 98% of the vote; protests after the vote were met with a crackdown in which a presidential commission of inquiry later reported at least 518 people killed — a toll the opposition and rights groups put far higher and whose attribution remains disputed.
Lissu became CHADEMA chairman in January 2025. He survived being shot repeatedly in a 2017 assassination attempt in Dodoma whose attackers were never brought to justice, contested the 2020 presidential election, and returned from exile in 2023. Amnesty International last week accused the government of continuing a post-election crackdown; the authorities did not respond to a request for comment in the BBC's reporting.
Both sides, in their own words
Both sides heard. Neither believed for free. Publishing a side's version is not endorsing it — the claim checks below are where verdicts live.
Side A · The prosecution's case
- Lissu's 3 April 2025 remarks told supporters the opposition would 'block the election' and 'mobilise rebellion', and were intended to encourage the public to disrupt the election and threaten the government.
- At sentencing the state sought a severe sentence, citing the five-year maximum for incitement.
Side B · Lissu's position
- His speech broke no law, his words were taken out of context, and the charges are politically motivated — part of a campaign for constitutional and electoral reform.
- After the verdict he told the court the incitement offence was one the judges had 'manufactured' — his words in court, reported by court coverage; he declined to apologise, saying innocent people do not ask for forgiveness.
Independently verified
The verdict: the High Court in Dar es Salaam acquitted Lissu of treason, finding the prosecution had failed to establish an essential element of the offence — the intention to threaten or intimidate the government — and convicted him of incitement, finding his public statements incited people to take actions intended to disrupt the electoral process. The sentence: four years in prison for incitement. At sentencing the state attorney cited a maximum of five years, a fine, or both; the court said it had weighed mitigating factors including that Lissu was a first-time offender. The first verdict reports, BBC and Reuters included, were published before sentence was passed; the four-year term is from Reuters' later update, with BBC-cited court coverage in agreement. The case: Lissu was arrested on 9 April 2025 in Mbinga, in southern Tanzania, days after a 3 April speech at CHADEMA headquarters during the party's 'No Reforms, No Election' campaign, and charged the following day. Treason — charged under section 39(2)(d) of the Penal Code — is non-bailable and carries the death penalty; he has been in custody since. Prosecutors said his remarks told supporters the opposition would 'block the election' and 'mobilise rebellion'. Lissu's answer: he pleaded not guilty throughout, conducted much of his own defence, and says the speech violated no law, his words were taken out of context, and the charges are politically motivated. After the verdict he told the judges the incitement offence was one they had 'manufactured'. The government has repeatedly denied targeting opponents.Not yet verified
Whether Lissu's bail application pending appeal will be granted, whether his roughly 19 months in pre-trial custody count toward the four-year term, and the status of separate false-information counts reported earlier in the case, had not been reported at publish time.Claim by claim
Why this label: Verified across the BBC's report and Reuters' report of the same judgment (NAIROBI, 6 Nov), in agreement on both halves of the split verdict and on the court's reasoning as reported. Both halves of the outcome are carried in the headline, slug and summary under the outcome-word rule — neither the acquittal nor the conviction is dropped.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
Why this label: Verified on Reuters' sentencing update (6 Nov) with BBC-cited reporting in agreement on four years. The sequencing is stated openly because early carries said 'sentence not yet announced' — those were pre-sentence reports, not a disagreement.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
Why this label: Verified across BBC and Reuters on the arrest, custody, campaign and the prosecution's characterisation of the speech (Reuters quotes the 'block the election' / 'mobilise rebellion' wording as the prosecution's case). The speech's meaning is the dispute at the heart of the trial and is carried as the two sides' positions, not as this page's finding.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
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Why this label: Verified as the two sides' stated positions: Lissu's defence and post-verdict words are reported by the BBC and Reuters and in court coverage; the government's denial is the BBC's reporting of its standing position. His further claim about how the incitement charge arose is his position, labelled as such in the sides panel — its procedural basis (which statutory section the conviction rests on) differs across secondary reports and is not stated as settled here.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
Why this label: Declared, not hidden: BBC/Reuters report his right to appeal to the Court of Appeal and that he sought bail (incitement, unlike treason, is bailable) — no outcome of that application was in the reporting read, and no formal post-verdict CHADEMA statement had been published in it.
On the ladder: the evidence so far sits low — early, single or social sources. We publish the claim as a claim, never as fact.
What we know / what we don't know yet
What we know
- The split verdict: acquitted of treason, convicted of incitement, four years — on the BBC's and Reuters' reporting of the judgment in agreement.
- The treason acquittal turns on the missing element of intent to threaten or intimidate the government, as the court is reported to have reasoned.
- Lissu has a right of appeal and has sought bail pending appeal.
What we don't know yet
- The outcome of the bail application, and whether his pre-trial custody counts toward the sentence.
- The exact statutory basis of the incitement conviction — secondary reports differ on the section; this page does not state one.
- Any formal post-verdict statement from CHADEMA or the government beyond the prosecution's in-court submissions.
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- The status of the separate false-information counts reported earlier in the case.
Why it matters
For nineteen months Tanzania's main opposition leader sat in prison facing a possible death sentence over a campaign speech. The court has now said the speech was not treason — and jailed him for four years over it anyway. That split outcome, in a country where the opposition was barred from the last election and hundreds died in the unrest that followed, will be read by both sides as vindication, which is exactly why this page keeps the two halves of the verdict together and labels each side's reading as its own.
Background
Show the background timeline (6)
Lissu is shot repeatedly outside his home in Dodoma; the attackers are never brought to justice.
Lissu becomes chairman of CHADEMA.
His 'No Reforms, No Election' speech at CHADEMA headquarters — the remarks at the centre of the case.
Arrested in Mbinga and charged with treason; held without bail from the following day.
CHADEMA, disqualified from the election, sits it out; President Samia is declared winner with 98% and unrest follows.
High Court acquits him of treason, convicts him of incitement, and sentences him to four years.
Update history
No silent edits. Every change is written here, with its time.
- Latest
Published in Checking state (queue MANUAL 1904 of the 10:13Z scan, 6 Nov). JUDGE AUDIT: (1) headline, slug, SEO title and summary all carry BOTH halves of the outcome — acquitted of treason AND guilty of incitement, four years — under the outcome-word rule; (2) verdict and sentence are Verified on BBC + Reuters in agreement; the speech's meaning and the 'manufactured' claim are labelled positions in a two-sided panel, never findings; (3) every number (58, four years, five-year maximum, 9 April 2025, 98%, at least 518 inquiry-reported deaths — attributed to the commission) traces to its named source; (4) both sides' strongest points are present, including the government's denial; (5) bail outcome, custody credit, the statutory section and CHADEMA's formal response are in the don't-know list; (6) photo is a labelled 2015 file photo, probed 200; video check made, none official found, none attached; (7) translations added in all 13 languages in the same run, with two-sided take labels translated in kind (no FR/AR full text to drop).