Crisis deepens

A crisis sparked by doubts about the results of presidential elections held on 20 May deepened on Wednesday with the arrest of the six opposition candidates followed by the detention of their respective campaign directors, a media source in Ndjamena told IRIN.

The source said the atmosphere in town was tense and that there was much repressed anger among opposition supporters who had, however, heeded an appeal by their leaders to stay within the confines of the law.

The six candidates had been arrested and held for a few hours on Monday. They were re-arrested early on Wednesday after Interior Minister Abderhamane Moussa banned gatherings of over 20 persons in an apparent bid to prevent the opposition from going ahead with a planned demonstration. That protest was to have been held at the burial of Brahim Selguet, a 22-year-old student killed during Monday’s arrests.

The source said the opposition presidential candidates were still in detention on Wednesday afternoon. The campaign directors were arrested at about 13H00 local time at the home of one of the candidates, where they had gathered to sign a joint communique announcing the postponement of Selguet’s funeral.

According to results announced on Monday, President Idriss Deby won the election with about 67 percent of the vote. However, about a quarter of the members of the electoral commission resigned prior to the announcement and Deby’s opponents said they would contest the result in Chad’s constitutional court.