Source : Sahel weather May 2025

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Since the legislative elections of December 2024, which his party "Les Transformateurs" boycotted, the political future of the former prime minister, Succès Masra, has been the subject of debate. At the end of January, he made a surprise appeal to those in power, saying he was "ready to work" with President Mahamat Idriss Déby. This offer was not taken up. Better still, in the middle of May, on Friday 16th, Succès Masra was arrested at his home. In a press briefing held on the same day, the public prosecutor, Oumar Kedelaye, indicated that the opponent was accused of "inciting hatred". He is therefore being prosecuted for "complicity in murder", "arson" and "desecration of graves". According to the public prosecutor's office, these charges are linked to the intercommunity clashes that took place on Wednesday 14 May in the village of Mandakao, in the province of Logone Occidental, on the border with Cameroon, which left 41 people dead (mostly women and children) and several others injured. According to a judicial source, some 80 nomad camps were burnt down.

According to the prosecutor, "the investigations conducted by the judicial police revealed the involvement of Mr Assyongar Masra Succès". He added that "messages were circulated, particularly on social networks, calling on the population to arm themselves against other citizens". The Succès Masra party condemned "a brutal arrest carried out without any known legal procedure". Djesada Ndolembaye, said that , one of the vice-presidents of the Succès Masra partySuccès Masra "was taken aback by the charges brought against him (...) He would never have called for hatred or community confrontations". The audio in question, attributed to Succès Masra, was broadcast in Ngambay, his mother tongue. According to his lawyers, the audio in question dates from May 2023 and is available on S. Masra's Youtube channel. They therefore dispute the claim that this audio could be linked to the deadly incidents in Mandakao. Although Masra was due to be heard on 19 May, the hearing was finally postponed and his lawyers were turned away. Succès Masra was finally questioned by the judicial police the following day. On 21 May, he was formally charged and placed in pre-trial detention. His lawyers are calling for the case to be dismissed outright. The State's judicial agency has brought a civil action against Succès Masra in this case.

A joint force between Chad and the Central African Republic

At the same time, N'Djamena and Bangui announced the creation of a joint force to combat insecurity on their shared 1,200 km border. The memorandum of understanding that led to the creation of this force was signed in October 2024. "The operational leader has already been appointed," says Issakha M. Djamous, Chad's Minister of the Armed Forces. "Central Africans and Chadians have suffered enough. It's time for these two peoples to live in peace and security", said the Central African Defence Minister, Claude Rameaux Bireau. For the time being, the number of soldiers in this force is not yet known.

On the other hand, at the end of his trial, Youssouf Déby Itno, the former director of the cabinet of President Mahamat I. Déby Itno, Youssouf Boy, was sentenced on 9 May to five years in prison for "active corruption". The conviction follows a complaint lodged in January by Chadian businessman About Hachim Bouder, who accused Youssouf Boy of not having repaid the sum of 11.8 billion CFA francs earmarked for the construction of infrastructure in the east of the country, using a mandate from the President of the Republic. The plaintiff, About Hachim Bouder, was also sentenced to five years in prison for "passive corruption". At the end of the month, a TikTok video of an army officer caused controversy. In it, the officer made offensive comments about the Sara community. Despite the virality of the video, no official reaction was recorded until 29 May.