{Brazzaville – A court in the Republic of Congo has jailed an opposition leader for two years for inciting public disorder, a charge arising from an unauthorised demonstration he organised in 2015.
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\nPaulin Makaya, who heads the small United For Congo party, said he would appeal his conviction, which also carries a fine of 2.5 million CFA francs \u20ac3 800.<\/p>\n
Makaya’s lawyers called the verdict “unjust and illegal.”<\/p>\n
The October 2015 protests were called to protest a referendum that ended a two-term limit on presidential mandates and allowed President Denis Sassou Nguesso to successfully run for re-election in March this year.<\/p>\n
The unrest went on for weeks and in the days immediately before the referendum at least four people were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces.<\/p>\n
At the time, the opposition described the referendum as a “constitutional coup”<\/p>\n
One UPC member, Destin Sikoula, said Makaya, who returned to Congo in late 2014 after 17 years in exile, had been convicted “just to make the government happy.”<\/p>\n
In June, prosecutors had urged the court to jail Makaya for five years should he be found guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Brazzaville – A court in the Republic of Congo has jailed an opposition leader for two years for inciting public disorder, a charge arising from an unauthorised demonstration he organised in 2015. } Paulin Makaya, who heads the small United For Congo party, said he would appeal his conviction, which also carries a fine of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[2462],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-news-24"],"bylines":[{"id":2462,"name":"News 24","slug":"news-24","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2462,"name":"News 24","slug":"news-24","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27223"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27223"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}