Dar es Salaam — Tundu Lissu used the closing stage of his defence in the treason trial on Wednesday to argue that the prosecution’s case was built on testimony from police officers and concealed witnesses whose accounts, he said, were unreliable, contradictory and shaped by a police force with a long-standing vendetta against him.

Resuming after the August 25 Maulid public holiday, Lissu told the three-judge High Court panel led by Justice Dunstan Ndunguru that the question was not merely whether words about elections had been spoken, but whether the Republic had proved the two essential elements alleged in the charge: an intention to threaten the government and an overt act manifesting that intention.

“I will deal with two introductory matters,” Lissu told the court. “First, what kind of witnesses are these, and what weight should their evidence be given? Second, I will deal with their evidence itself and show that there is no offence of treason, or any criminal offence at all.”

Lissu’s final evidence followed an extended personal and political account he gave on Monday, August 24, in which he described his decades of activism, earlier criminal prosecutions, the 2017 attempt on his life, and CHADEMA’s campaign for electoral reforms. He has maintained that the prosecution is politically motivated, a claim the state has not accepted.

‘People nobody knows’

Lissu said the prosecution initially listed 30 witnesses at the preliminary hearing but called only 17. He said the absence of the other 13 witnesses was significant and invited the court to consider why they were not brought.

According to Lissu, eight of the 17 prosecution witnesses were police officers, while the other nine were concealed witnesses identified only by pseudonyms such as P1, P2 and P4. He argued that neither the court nor the defence knew their actual names, places of residence, occupations or other identifying details.

“The court does not know their names. It does not know where they live or what work they do,” Mr Lissu addressed the bench. “It knows nothing beyond P1, P2 and the rest. We could have been sitting with them throughout this case and would not know it.”

He submitted that the testimony of the concealed witnesses should be treated with particular caution because, in his words, they could have been police officers or other persons whose identity could not be tested independently. 

The prosecution has sought protective arrangements for several witnesses, citing alleged threats, and the court previously permitted a modified concealed-witness arrangement.

Lissu then turned to the police witnesses, whose evidence he linked to what he described as more than two decades of conflict with the police leadership. He identified Inspector General of Police Camilius Wambura and Director of Criminal Investigations Ramadhani Kingai, whom he accused of pursuing a personal vendetta against him.

Arrest and investigation theory

Lissu said PW1, ACP George Bagyemu, testified that he led the investigation team from April 4 to April 8, 2025, a period beginning before Lissu’s arrest. In Lissu’s account of that evidence, Bagyemu said he communicated directly with DCI Kingai through Deputy Commissioner of Police Ramadhani Ng’azi, but not with the Zonal Crime Officer, the DPP’s office or the Regional Security Officer.

Bagyemu, Lissu said, described three investigative teams covering operations, intelligence and advice. Yet, according to Lissu, the witness could not identify who ordered his arrest, saying he had only been informed that the suspect had been arrested in Mbinga and was being taken to Dar es Salaam.

“He says he was the chief investigator at the time, but he does not know who ordered my arrest,” Lissu underscored. “The person who informed him that I had been arrested was the link between him and DCI Kingai. My evidence is that Kingai, and presumably IGP Wambura, ordered my arrest and created this case.”

Lissu said ACP Amin Mahamba, whom he referred to as PW16, substantially confirmed Bagyemu’s account. He asked the judges to view the testimony of the other police witnesses through the same lens, arguing that they were officers serving under leaders he said had repeatedly sought to prosecute him.

He said such evidence required independent corroboration before it could safely support a conviction for an offence carrying the most severe penalty in the criminal law.

‘Self-confessed criminals’

A central part of Lissu’s closing defence concerned the nine concealed witnesses. He said that, with the exception of PW4, their written statements and oral testimony showed that they had allegedly planned crimes around the 2025 General Election, including assaulting people and burning property.

Lissu said these witnesses were arrested between April 4 and April 8, 2025, admitted in their statements that they had planned criminal acts, and were then released. He alleged that ACP Mahamba’s team offered them a bargain: testify against him and their own cases would be dropped.

“These are people who confessed to police that they were planning crimes,” Lissu said. “They were released and told: agree to be witnesses against Tundu Lissu, and we will withdraw your charges.”

He argued that the alleged planners had come from areas later affected by post-election violence, including Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mbeya and Songea. Referring to the report of a commission chaired by retired Chief Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, Lissu cited figures he said the commission recorded for deaths in Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Mbeya.

Lissu said Mahamba had been part of the investigation team examining the violence of October 29, but had accepted in cross-examination that no action was later taken against the witnesses who had allegedly admitted planning election-related crimes.

“What legal weight does evidence from criminals of this kind have?” Lissu asked. “This is the government’s evidence against me. They confessed they would commit crimes, were allowed to go back where they were planning them, and later many people were killed in those areas.”

He told the court he would present legal arguments in writing on why he considered those witnesses “totally unreliable.”

Intention to threaten the government

The charge alleges that Lissu formed an intention to threaten the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania and manifested that intention through the words attributed to him. Lissu argued that the prosecution had not produced reliable evidence of either the alleged intention or its manifestation.

He said PW1 and PW16 asserted that they saw an intention to commit treason simply by watching the Jambo TV video. Lissu quoted Mahamba’s police statement, admitted as Defence Exhibit D15, as saying that the investigator and his team watched the recording and concluded that it disclosed treason and publication of false information.

The prosecution objected when Lissu began relying on D15 during his defence, arguing that it had been admitted for the limited purpose of contradiction under the Evidence Act. Lissu replied that the document concerned the case and should be read by the court.

“I introduced it deliberately,” Lissu interjected. “If they want to use it too, that should make them happy. It concerns this case, and the court must read it and look at it.”

The judges ruled that, because the exhibit was already before the court, they could not prevent Lissu from using it.

Lissu contrasted Mahamba’s account with the evidence of PW2, John Kaaya, and PW17, the Jambo TV worker who attended the meeting. He said Kaaya’s statement referred only to remarks bearing “indications of criminality” and did not identify treason or an intention to commit treason.

He said PW17 described the meeting as dealing with the General Election, CHADEMA’s No Reforms, No Election agenda and the party’s concerns about the electoral process. Lissu argued that PW17, the only witness said to have been present for the speech, did not say he heard or saw any treasonable statement.

“The only witness who was present at the meeting saw no treason at all,” Lissu went on. “He said we discussed No Reforms, No Election and the problems we faced in elections.”

Video and publication dispute

Lissu returned to an argument that has run through his cross-examination of the state witnesses: that the prosecution did not produce the actual video in court. He said that, while witnesses attributed certain statements to him, the court had no recording against which it could test the competing accounts of what was said, in what context and over how long.

“Proof is the video, not words, and the video is not here,” he said. “They pulled out two or three phrases and say that is treason, while leaving out all the other words.”

He said the prosecution had promised 11 exhibits, including nine documentary exhibits and two physical exhibits, but had tendered none of them. “They are only words, and words alone do not break a bone,” he told the judges, before arguing that mere words did not constitute an overt act of treason.

Lissu also said PW17 had testified that he and four Jambo TV colleagues recorded the meeting using Sony cameras, streamed it live and stored the recordings on Jambo TV’s YouTube, X and Instagram accounts. He argued that the state’s own witness had thereby accepted responsibility for publication, not Lissu.

“The person who was there says he did not hear the alleged words, and he admits that he carried out the publication,” Lissu added. “The publication was his, not another person’s.”

Lissu said the prosecution witnesses who were not present had claimed he published the recording, while the person at the meeting said the Jambo TV team did the filming, livestreaming and storage. In his view, that conflict was fatal to the prosecution’s case on publication.

‘Pre-determined investigation’

Lissu argued that the investigators had decided he was guilty before carrying out a full inquiry. He said Bagyemu and Kaaya saw excerpts of the video on April 4, immediately concluded that treason had been committed and opened an investigation file on the same day.

He said Mahamba likewise testified that he saw treason when he watched the recording. According to Lissu, none of the investigators sought legal advice from the DPP, interviewed CHADEMA leaders, or asked Lissu what he meant by the speech before treating the case as treason.

“They did not look for me to ask what I meant,” Lissu pointed out. “They did not look for CHADEMA leaders. They had already decided that they had a criminal.”

He cited Police General Orders on the presumption of innocence and on the principle that conduct may be treated as criminal only where it is defined by law. He said the witnesses accepted those principles but could not show where they had applied them in the investigation.

Lissu also argued that the Penal Code provision invoked against him did not expressly make stopping an election or mobilising people not to participate in an election a treason offence. 

He said the state had not identified any particular President, Vice President, minister, regional commissioner, local government official or other member of the executive whom he had threatened.

“They have not said whom, from the President to a village or street executive officer, I threatened,” he added. “There is no witness who said my alleged intention was carried out. No one said the government was frightened. No one said State House was unliveable that day.”

He argued that the prosecution had not proved the alleged result of the purported intention, namely that the government had been threatened or alarmed.

Account of the arrest

Lissu also repeated his account of his April 2025 arrest in Mbinga, saying police moved against him at the close of a public meeting without first informing him of the offence he was alleged to have committed.

He said an officer identifying himself as the Mbinga police chief told him to go to the station immediately, but would not tell him why. Lissu said that when he insisted on being given the legal basis for an arrest, police fired tear gas, beat people with batons and took him from the stage.

“I found myself inside a police Land Cruiser, with my neck under police boots, lying on the floor of the vehicle,” he recalled.

Lissu said he was taken to Mbinga police station, where an officer he identified as Lugano Gwasa told him that police had received orders from the Regional Police Commander to arrest him, but had not been told the offence. 

He said that later in Songea, Regional Police Commander Michael Chilya told him the order came from police headquarters in Dodoma and that he was to be taken to Dar es Salaam, where a case had already been opened.

He argued that Gwasa and a Ruvuma regional criminal investigations officer were listed as prosecution witnesses but never called. Lissu submitted that they were omitted because their evidence would have shown that the arrest did not follow legal procedure.

Final attack on the prosecution

In his last substantive point, Lissu said all 17 prosecution witnesses gave oral evidence that differed from the contents of the 16 written statements before the court. He said the witnesses added material details from the witness box that did not appear in their police statements.

Lissu submitted that such discrepancies made the oral evidence unreliable. He added that several police officers had written their own statements, signed them themselves and then testified about them, a practice he challenged as improper.

“All 17 government witnesses gave sworn oral evidence in this box which does not match the 16 exhibits before the court,” he reminded the judges. “Evidence on the same matter that conflicts with the written evidence is not trustworthy.”

He told the judges that the uncalled police officers from Ruvuma could have helped establish how certain statements were recorded. After a brief question from Justice Ndunguru about the relevance of those uncalled witnesses, Lissu replied that their evidence went to the reliability of the recording process.

Lissu then told the court that he had finished his defence evidence. The prosecution requested a short health break before beginning its cross-examination of him.