On Friday a three-judge panel of Tanzania’s High Court in Dar es Salaam acquitted Tundu Lissu, chairman of the main opposition party Chadema, of treason, a charge that could have carried the death penalty. The same panel then convicted him of incitement and sentenced him to four years in prison. Al Jazeera reported that the trial has been closely watched abroad and has drawn international condemnation. Lissu was taken back to prison after the hearing.

So he won the big count and lost the small one, and he walked out of court in exactly the custody he walked in with. To see how that happens you have to look at the mechanics.

How you lose a case you won

Treason is hard to prove, and it should be. As The Citizen reported, the court held that prosecutors had not shown Lissu meant to intimidate the government with his statements. Without that intent there is no treason. The judges did find, though, that his calls for the public to prevent and disrupt the 2025 general election amounted to incitement. Some prosecution witnesses testified that his words had influenced them to take part in efforts to disrupt the vote. The presiding judge, Dunstan Ndunguru, said the court found that “the accused committed the lesser offence of incitement under Section 390 of the Penal Code.”

The legal route here matters. Justice Ndunguru relied on Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which, as he explained it, allows a court to convict someone of a lesser offence even if that offence was not separately listed in the charge. The Citizen describes the incitement provision as an alternative to the treason count. Lissu sees it differently. According to the Associated Press, he told the judges: “You have sought out an offense that did not exist, and you have done so following political directives.” He also said: “Those who are innocent, like me, do not apologize.”

Lesser-included offences exist in plenty of legal systems, and the idea behind them is reasonable. If a prosecutor charges you with murder and proves manslaughter, the court doesn’t have to let you go. The odd part in this case is the gap between the two charges. The state built its case around a capital crime that turns on intent to intimidate the government. It could not prove that intent. What it could prove was that he made a speech. A speech is the kind of thing an opposition leader is supposed to make, and Lissu has said all along that his was part of a lawful campaign.

What the treason charge accomplished

The timeline matters too. According to the AP, police detained Lissu on April 9, 2025, after he spoke at a rally demanding electoral reform. He was charged with treason the next day. That works out to a little under 19 months in custody before Friday’s verdict. The general election was held while he was locked up, and presidential candidates from both major opposition parties were barred from running.

So think about the treason charge from the government’s side. It was not needed to win in court, because the court threw it out. It was useful before the court got there. For a year and a half the leader of the opposition was a defendant in a capital case and not a candidate, and that covered the whole election. Whatever the incitement sentence turns out to mean in practice, the main thing the charge was good for had already happened.

The election itself led to protests and killings. An inquiry reported in April that at least 518 people had died. Its chairman, Mohamed Chande Othman, said the real number was probably higher because some families buried relatives without taking the bodies to morgues. Chadema puts the toll at close to 2,000. The United Nations said it could not verify that figure because of insecurity and an internet blackout. The UN has called for an investigation and cited reports that police took bodies from mortuaries to unknown locations. The government denies cracking down on dissent and blames protesters for starting the violence.

The man in the dock

Lissu is 58. He survived being shot 16 times in 2017 and has at times lived in exile, citing threats to his life. His detention has included fights over access to his lawyers. His lead lawyer, Rugemeleza Nshala, said Lissu ended a short hunger strike on October 27 after prison officials allowed him a private meeting with his younger brother. His elder brother, Alute Mughwai Lissu, died on the Sunday before the verdict. In court Lissu asked to be released for the funeral: “Please, let me go and lay Mzee Alute to rest.” Supporters chanted “Viva!” as he arrived under heavy security, and his older sister was there with several Chadema leaders.

Chadema says it will appeal the sentence and seek bail, The Citizen reported. Another opposition party, ACT Wazalendo, has questioned the conviction and called it a blow to the rule of law.

Political trials elsewhere in the region have gone much further. Next door in Congo, the former president Joseph Kabila was sentenced to death in absentia. Measured against that, Tanzania’s court can say it applied the law carefully. It rejected the capital charge, required proof of intent, and handed down a sentence counted in years rather than in the noose.

Still, the result is that Lissu was held for 19 months on a charge the state could not prove, through an election he could not contest. He has now been convicted of a charge he says he was never asked to answer. On the evidence, the state lost the case it brought and kept the prisoner it wanted.