A Chadian court sentenced eight opposition leaders to eight years in prison on Friday, in what their lawyers condemned as a politically motivated ruling that further tightens President Mahamat Idriss Deby's grip on power in the landlocked central African nation.

The eight defendants, all senior figures in the GCAP — a coalition of 13 political parties and civil society groups formally known as the Groupe de concertation des acteurs politiques — were arrested in the capital N'Djamena in late April, just days before a planned protest march that the government had banned. They faced charges of criminal association, rebellion, and illegal possession of weapons of war. During the trial, held at the N'Djamena Palace of Justice after its first two days took place at Klessoum detention centre, the prosecutor had sought a ten-year sentence. Defence lawyers argued that the prosecution failed to substantiate any of the allegations, with one attorney describing the indictment as holding "barely two pages" and containing "no demonstration" of the alleged offences. The eight accused addressed the judge directly: "We are between your hands — if you think we can be criminals or the origin of a rebellion, it is for you to decide in your soul and conscience."

The verdict came one day after Chad's Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the GCAP movement itself. The coalition had been vocal in calling for a boycott of the May 2024 presidential election that confirmed Deby in office, three years after he assumed power on an interim basis following the battlefield death of his father, the long-ruling Idriss Deby Itno. The GCAP had also launched social media calls in April urging Chadians to protest against "injustice and exclusion," and had previously denounced what it described as a government-orchestrated "climate of terror."

Friday's sentences are the latest in a series of moves against organised opposition in Chad. Succès Masra, a prominent opposition leader and former prime minister whose Transformers party had rallied in support of the eight detainees, was himself sentenced in May 2025 to 20 years in prison for "incitement to hatred" — a trial Human Rights Watch denounced as politically motivated. Security forces killed a protester at that rally. In October, Chad's parliament also passed a constitutional revision allowing the president unlimited seven-year terms, a change the opposition labelled "authoritarian" and which could theoretically allow Deby to surpass even his father's three-decade rule.

Defence lawyers said they would appeal to the criminal court of appeal in N'Djamena, seeking a ruling free from what they called political pressure. Human rights observers had warned before the verdict that a lengthy sentence would amount to "definitively decapitating the opposition in Chad." The GCAP's dissolution and the imprisonment of its leadership leave the country's organised political opposition severely weakened ahead of any future electoral contests.