The collective trial of 454 suspected rebels in Chad, all accused in particular of “assassinationof former President Idriss Déby Itno killed at the front in 2021 during their offensive, opened on Monday behind closed doors in a prison, the attorney general and lawyers told AFP.
The hearing of the Criminal Court of the Court of Appeal of N’Djamena, behind closed doors in the enclosure of the Klessoum prison, about twenty km south-east of the capital, was adjourned to Wednesday immediately after the indictment was read, the sources said.
authoritarian president
The defendants areover 400N’Djamena Attorney General Mahamat El-Hadj Abba Nana told AFP. “They are 454 accused“, including 386 present at the hearing, detailed lawyers to AFP. They are also judged among other things for “terrorism” And “breach of state security“.
Read alsoThe funeral of Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno begins in N’Djamena
In the spring of 2021, the then most powerful rebel group, the Front pour l’Alternance et la Concorde au Tchad (FACT), launched an offensive from its rear bases in Libya towards the capital N’Djamena. On April 20, the army announced that Marshal Déby, who had ruled Chad for more than 30 years with an iron fist, had been killed at the front by the rebels and named one of his sons, the young general Mahamat Idriss Déby. Itno, President of the Republic for a period of transition, at the head of a military junta of 15 generals.