The Trial Is the Sentence
Last week, a politician who visited a jailed opposition leader in Uganda found him learning to communicate again with a speech therapist and an alphabet chart. He cannot speak. He spells out what he wants to say letter by letter, and when she told him how shocked she was, he tapped out that it could have been worse. Three months earlier he had collapsed in a courtroom and been taken away by ambulance, unconscious. Kizza Besigye is 70, he has been in custody since November 2024, and his wife says his treason trial is continuing in his absence.
Days later, in Tanzania, another opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, announced a hunger strike after his lawyers were turned away from his prison and, his party says, denied private meetings with him, in breach of a court order. His lead lawyer told the Associated Press that Lissu refused food on the morning of Tuesday 27 October and ended it after lunch, when prison authorities allowed a private meeting with his younger brother. Today, 30 October, is the International Day of Political Prisoners, which marks a hunger strike by prisoners in the Soviet camps of Mordovia on that date in 1974. I set Besigye and Lissu beside the other cases I could verify, in Africa and then in the world’s most closed states. What stands out is that these are stories about courts more than prisons: a trial that should be the way out has become part of the sentence.
This report is built from public reporting by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Reuters and local newsrooms. I have not independently verified what happened inside any prison. Where governments have replied I say so; in most cases they have not, or they deny that the person is a political prisoner. The counts below are the latest I could find, and they undercount. CPJ’s annual census, taken on 1 December 2025, found 330 journalists jailed worldwide, 42 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the fourth-highest regional total. CPJ counts North Africa with the Middle East, where Egypt alone held 18.
The longest imprisonments in Africa have never been to a courtroom. In September 2001 Eritrea arrested a group of critical voices in Asmara, independent journalists among them. Twenty-five years later Dawit Isaak, Temesgen Ghebreyesus, Seyoum Tsehaye and Amanuel Asrat are still held, according to Reporters Without Borders, without trial and with their whereabouts unconfirmed. Eritrea accounts for 16 of the 42 sub-Saharan journalists in CPJ’s census, all held for at least two decades. In 2009 President Isaias Afwerki said of Isaak, a Swedish citizen, that he did not care where he was or what he was doing. Sweden’s foreign minister said in December 2025 that the ministry assessed Isaak to be alive. A global appeal by more than 100 journalists this September asked for the one thing a government can always give a prisoner’s family, which is an answer.
In Niger the answer has also been silence, but for a head of state. Mohamed Bazoum, elected in 2021, and his wife Hadiza have been held inside the presidential palace in Niamey since the coup of July 2023. The military leaders said they would try him for treason. According to his lawyers, he has never been brought before a magistrate or told of any proceedings, and no member of his family has visited in three years. His formal term ended in April 2026 and he has refused to resign. The country’s new rulers have also jailed journalists: CPJ counted five at the end of last year, the highest figure Niger has recorded, and two Nigerien journalists, held since November 2025, were freed in July.
In Uganda there is a trial, but it has begun to run without the defendant. Besigye was seized in Kenya in November 2024 and brought back to face treason charges, which he and his co-accused deny and his supporters call political. On 29 July 2026 he collapsed in the dock and was taken to intensive care at Mulago hospital, where his wife, Winnie Byanyima, said he was unconscious and unresponsive even to pain. On 20 October the politician Doreen Nyanjura, who visited him, wrote that he can hear but cannot speak and cannot hold a water bottle. Byanyima has said the proceedings are going on in his absence despite medical reports that he is unfit to stand trial. The Ugandan government spokesman did not respond to Reuters when it asked about his collapse.
In Tanzania the wait is the punishment. Lissu was arrested on 9 April 2025 after addressing a rally that called for electoral reform, and charged with treason the next day over a speech that prosecutors say urged people to rebel and disrupt that year’s election, a charge that can carry the death penalty. He has been detained for more than 18 months, according to the Associated Press. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer says the case is political. On 21 August 2026 the High Court in Dar es Salaam ruled that he has a case to answer, and Reuters reports that the court is due to deliver its judgement on 6 November. His party, CHADEMA, was barred from the election, and a commission appointed by the government said the violence that followed killed at least 518 people while blaming the protesters. Amnesty International called for his immediate release in April 2025.
In Cameroon detention has already cost a life. Anicet Ekane, a veteran opposition leader aged 74, was arrested in Douala on 24 October 2025 after backing the candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who rejects the official result of that month’s presidential election. He was charged with insurrection and rebellion. He died in military detention in Yaoundé 38 days later. His son said his breathing had worsened sharply in the final week and that the family’s warnings were ignored, and his lawyer said he had been denied proper treatment. The government said military and personal doctors treated him, expressed regret and said President Biya had ordered an investigation, and the European Union delegation asked for the release of everyone arbitrarily detained since the vote. I have not found a published result of that investigation.
In Tunisia the courts have handed down the sentences openly. On 3 September 2026 Tunisia’s highest appeals court rejected the final appeals of dozens of opposition figures in a mass “conspiracy” case against 40 people, closing three years of proceedings, and sentences of up to 45 years stand, with half of the defendants tried in their absence. Najib Chebbi, who leads the National Salvation Front, received 12 years. Four others, Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawhar Ben Mbarek and Ridha Belhaj, received 20 each. Rached Ghannouchi, founder of the Ennahda party, was given 14 years in June 2026. Chebbi’s daughter, the lawyer Haifa Chebbi, said the ruling confirms that the judiciary is not independent; lawyers say they were notified of the final hearing only days before. President Kais Saied has called the accused traitors and terrorists, and his government denies that anyone is being persecuted for politics.
In Rwanda and Ethiopia the cases are fewer and quieter. Amnesty International has called for the release of ten people in Rwanda, among them the opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, arrested in June 2025, eight members of her party, DALFA-Umurinzi, arrested in October and December 2021, and a journalist, all accused of subversion. In Ethiopia CPJ counted five journalists held on terrorism charges linked to coverage of the Amhara conflict, and in the run-up to the 1 June 2026 election the managing editor of Addis Standard, Million Beyene, was taken from his newsroom in April and held at an unknown location for nearly two weeks, according to CPJ, with no charge reported. The magazine’s licence had been revoked in February. Bewket Abebe of The Reporter was held for three days in March and released without explanation.
Somalia is the place I know best and the easiest to leave out of a census. On 14 July 2026 the Puntland Intelligence Service arrested the journalist Mohamad Jama Mohamud in Bosaso, according to the National Union of Somali Journalists, after he wrote about a traders’ protest against new taxes at the port; no charge was stated. Suways Jama Mohamud, who runs the online outlet Suways Media, had been held in Garowe Central Prison since 2 June over a video about a militia and was released on bail on 15 July. In my earlier analysis for African Arguments I counted more than 200 journalists arbitrarily arrested or detained by government security forces in Somalia between 2019 and 2026, using the records of the Somali Journalists Syndicate, CPJ and others, and I found no security officer prosecuted for any of them. A census taken on a single date misses short detentions, and a short detention still tells the next journalist what to leave out.
Beyond Africa the numbers are larger and the method is the same. In Russia, the rights group Memorial had recognised 1,680 political prisoners by the end of June 2026, 93 more than three months earlier, and counted 5,567 people jailed in cases it considers politically motivated, including cases not yet assessed. The monitoring group OVD-Info reported on 29 October, citing Memorial, that at least 69 people subjected to political persecution have died since the start of the war in Ukraine, in detention, during searches, under house arrest or shortly after release, most often from illness and delayed medical care. In Belarus, the rights group Viasna counted 889 political prisoners in its August review, and at least 10,058 people prosecuted for political reasons since 2020. On 13 December 2025 Belarus freed 123 prisoners, among them the Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski and the opposition leaders Maria Kolesnikova and Viktar Babaryka, in a deal under which the United States lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash.
In Azerbaijan the Supreme Court upheld on 3 April 2026 sentences of up to nine years for staff of the investigative outlet Abzas Media, including its director Ulvi Hasanli and its editor Sevinj Vagifgizi, and nine years for Farid Mehralizada of Radio Free Europe. CPJ counts at least 24 journalists jailed there, most accused of taking money from Western donors.
Elsewhere the opposition leader is the prisoner. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and a potential presidential rival to President Erdoğan, has been held since his arrest in March 2025. In mid-September 2026 a court gave him two years and one month for insulting a public official over remarks made in 2022, with a restriction on his political rights, and he still faces separate prosecutions including corruption charges. In Iran, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi was arrested on 12 December 2025 after speaking at a ceremony for a lawyer who had been found dead, and in February her lawyer told AFP she had been given six years for “gathering and collusion” and a further year and a half for propaganda, a verdict that can still be appealed.
In Pakistan, Imran Khan, 74, is held at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi on corruption convictions that he calls political, and faces more than 100 other cases. His son Sulaiman said this week that no one has seen or heard from him since August and that the authorities are trying to kill him; Khan himself said in August that he was being tortured, and the government denies any mistreatment. On 2 January 2026 an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad sentenced journalists and commentators who live abroad, among them Sabir Shakir and Moeed Pirzada, to life in prison in their absence over the May 2023 riots, a verdict Shakir called political victimisation. In Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai was sentenced on 9 February 2026 to 20 years for sedition and collusion with foreign forces, and China held 50 journalists in CPJ’s census, seven of them in Hong Kong.
The largest and least visible cases are the ones where no one can count. As of 12 June 2026, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) counted at least 14,306 political prisoners in Myanmar and 31,162 arrests since the 2021 coup. It says Aung San Suu Kyi remains at an undisclosed location and that the junta refuses to give credible information on her wellbeing. In North Korea the best estimate remains that of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, which in 2014 put the number of political prisoners at 80,000 to 120,000 in four large camps and found that crimes against humanity were continuing. No independent observer has been allowed in since, so that figure is twelve years old and cannot be checked. Venezuela shows that numbers can fall. The rights group Foro Penal counted 322 political prisoners on 5 October 2026, down from 875 in late October 2025, but 170 of them have not been convicted of anything, and a prisoners’ alliance says 36 to 40 signed release orders have waited weeks to be carried out.
What I take from the cases together is that political prisoners, in Africa and elsewhere, are not mainly held after fair trials that were merely harsh. They are held in the gap where legal process has been suspended: Isaak with no hearing, Bazoum with no charge, Besigye with a hearing he cannot attend, Lissu with lawyers who cannot see him in private, the Tunisian defendants with a court that gave their counsel days, and in Belarus and Venezuela the doors opened in bargains and orders, not by verdict. The charges differ, from terrorism to treason to conspiracy, but the method is the same: the process meant to decide guilt becomes the punishment. It works because each case looks like a separate legal matter, and the pattern shows only when the cases are put in one place.
OPR makes five demands: four aimed at specific governments and one at all of them. We ask Eritrea to say whether Dawit Isaak, Temesgen Ghebreyesus, Seyoum Tsehaye and Amanuel Asrat are alive and to let their families and an independent doctor see them. We ask Uganda to release Kizza Besigye on medical grounds and to stop trying him in his absence. We ask Tanzania to guarantee Tundu Lissu private access to his lawyers and a fair judgement on 6 November. We ask Cameroon to publish the findings of its investigation into the death of Anicet Ekane. And we ask every government named here, from Asmara to Minsk to Caracas, to publish a register of who is held on political or media-related charges, where, and since when, because a prisoner who is counted is harder to lose. The general demand covers Somalia, my own country, where Puntland, Somaliland and the federal government should charge a journalist in court or release him.
If you are a journalist, a lawyer, a diaspora organisation or a reader with a name that belongs on this list, send it to OPR. I will check it and add it as a dated update. The governments named here are invited to reply, and I will publish what they say, along with any correction.
Besigye’s answer on the alphabet chart, that it could have been worse, is the most generous sentence in this report, and no government should be allowed to hide behind it. A man who has to say it has already been failed by a court that carries on in his absence and by a government that did not answer when asked about his collapse. A hunger strike is the one protest a prisoner can make without anyone’s permission, and the lesson of Mordovia is the lesson of the lists above: what keeps a political prisoner alive is not mercy but attention, a lawyer at the gate, a doctor, a family that knows the address, a name on a register that someone reads aloud. On 6 November Tanzania’s High Court is due to speak on Tundu Lissu. Between now and then, and for every name in this report, the question is not whether the person is popular or guilty. It is where they are, and who is allowed to see them.
Committee to Protect Journalists, 2025 prison census (as of 1 December 2025) and 15 January 2026 summary; CPJ, “Under the shadow of fear”, Ethiopia, May 2026
Reporters Without Borders, 22 September 2026 (the appeal for Dawit Isaak and his three colleagues)
Reuters via Daily Maverick, 27 October 2026 (Lissu hunger strike, charges and court dates); Associated Press via Club of Mozambique, 27–28 October 2026 (end of hunger strike, arrest date)
Amnesty International, “Tanzania: Stop repression of opposition leaders and immediately release Tundu Lissu”, April 2025
Reuters via TimesLIVE, 30 July 2026, and Daily Monitor, 20 October 2026 (Besigye)
Africanews, 25 July 2026 (Bazoum), and 16 July 2026 (two Nigerien journalists freed)
Al Jazeera, 1 December 2025 (Anicet Ekane)
Al Jazeera, AFP and Reuters, 3 September 2026 (Tunisia, Court of Cassation)
Amnesty International, urgent action AFR 47/0718/2026, March 2026 (Rwanda)
IFJ and NUSOJ, 14–15 July 2026, via AllAfrica (Puntland arrests)
Ismail Abukar, analysis on arbitrary detention of journalists in Somalia, African Arguments, republished by AllAfrica 6 August 2026
Memorial, Barometer of Repression, second quarter of 2026 (published 7 July 2026); OVD-Info, 29 October 2026
Viasna human rights review for August 2026, via Belsat, 7 September 2026; Al Jazeera, 13 December 2025 (Belarus releases)
CPJ, 8 April 2026 (Azerbaijan Supreme Court, Abzas Media and RFE/RL)
dpa via Ghana News Agency, 14 September 2026 (İmamoğlu)
AFP via The New Arab, 8 February 2026 (Narges Mohammadi)
Al Jazeera and AP, 2 January 2026 (Pakistan journalists); The Independent via Newswire, 30 October 2026 (Imran Khan)
Channel 4 News, 9 February 2026 (Jimmy Lai)
AAPP (Burma), statement of 18 June 2026 (Myanmar figures as of 12 June)
UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea, February 2014, via Anadolu Agency
Foro Penal balance of 9 October 2026, via El Diario (Venezuela)
Human Rights House, history of 30 October as the Day of the Political Prisoner
How to cite this piece
Abukar, Ismail, for the Organization for Prisoners' Rights. (2026). The Trial Is the Sentence. Mogadishu: OPR. https://opr.org.so/news/the-trial-is-the-sentence/