The German ambassador left Chad on Saturday April 8 at the end of the day, after the country’s military authorities gave him 48 hours to leave.
Jan-Christian Gordon Kricke was expelled for his “discourteous attitude” and his “non-respect of diplomatic practices”, government spokesman Aziz Mahamat Saleh said in a brief statement posted to Twitter on Friday. The reasons given by Chad to justify this eviction are “totally incomprehensible” a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry said in an emailed statement.
The move should not be seen as a severance of relations between the two countries, Chad’s foreign ministry said in a separate statement. Mr. Saleh could not be reached for comment. A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment further.
Mr. Kricke, who had been ambassador to Chad since 2021, had expressed concern about delays in holding elections to restore democracy following a military coup that year. He also criticized the lack of transparency in investigations into opposition protests in 2022, according to Yamingue Betinbye, a political analyst at the Center for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences, in N’Djamena. On October 20, security forces fired on protesters in several towns in Chad, including the capital, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens more, Human Rights Watch said.
Chad is a key ally of the United States and the European Union in the fight against extremism in the region. The country is also seen as a buffer to prevent unrest in Libya, its northern neighbor, from spreading south. Last year, Chad became the first country to strike a debt restructuring agreement under the G20 common framework with its main creditor, mining group Glencore. This agreement made it possible to release a payment of 570 million dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).