The Chadian Minister of Justice, Djimet Arabi, has described as “fake news”, reports that jailed former rebel leader Abdelkader Baba Lade had been released from prison.
Arabi said contrary to the reports, Lade was still in prison serving the eight-year jail-term to which he was sentenced on December 6, 2018.
The origins of the said “fake news” have been traced to a ceremony on April 22, 2020, in Mousoro during which several followers of Lade’s were conspicuously present.
The reports were further fuelled by the fact that Baba Lade was now perceived as no longer representing any significant danger to President Idris Derby who has a strong grip on power in the Central African nation.
Lade, the leader of Chad’s Front Populaire pour le Redressement (FPR) (Popular Front for Recovery) was arrested in mid-December 2014 by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic.
Laddé used to lead a Chadian rebel group, the Front populaire pour le redressement, which was expelled from Chad in 2008 and relocated to northern CAR.
In 2012 he surrendered to African Union peacekeepers in CAR, who transferred him and nearly 500 of his followers to Chad.
In July 2014 Chad’s Derby appointed him as the Prefect of Grande Sido, a district in Moyen-Chari, a region on Chad’s border with CAR.
However, in late November, 2017, Derby issued a decree relieving Ladd of his job without explanation and he subsequently disappeared.
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