Human rights activists urge ICC to act against Tanzanian president for crimes against humanity

International human rights activists have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a case against Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan and several senior members of her government for crimes against humanity during the crackdown on civilian protesters after the 29 October 2025 elections.

South African NGO Intelwatch, the Madrid Bar Association, the World Jurist Association and several anonymous Tanzanian NGOs submitted an 82-page dossier of evidence to the Hague-based ISS on 18 November, accusing Tanzanian security forces of deliberately killing between 700 and 3,000 protesters after the election.

The widespread protests erupted after Hassan was declared the winner of an election in which the candidates of the two main opposition parties were disqualified by law.

The activists charged Hassan and her officials with many other crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, rape and abduction, mainly against the Tanzanian political opposition, before the elections, going back to 2022.

Read more: Tanzanian opposition puts election death toll in the thousands, while government denies excessive force

The documents say the attack by security forces on protesters across the country after the elections “resulted in massive numbers of victims”, though it was difficult to provide exact numbers because of the government’s information blackout, intimidation of witnesses, disposal of bodies and denial that mass killings occurred.

It says the estimates of the countrywide death toll range from at least 10 confirmed by the United Nations; at least 500 according to the count of diplomatic sources; more than 1,000 according to the two main opposition parties, Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo; to more than 3,000 “recorded with evidence” by Pan-African Rights Groups, a movement of 40 African organisations. “None of this has been verified,” the document says.

The dossier says another estimated 3,000 people were extrajudicially killed in so-called counterterrorism operations between 2016 and 2020 in the Kibiti, Mkuranga and Rufiji districts of the Pwani (Coast) region.

The documents also charge Hassan and her officials with the crime against humanity of enforcing the disappearance of more than 200 people documented since 2019 by UN experts; 83 documented by the Tanganyika Law Society since 2021.

Read more: Crackdown on popular dissent in Tanzania as sham election goes ahead

It also alleges documented systematic torture of detainees across a number of detention facilities over several years.

It accuses Hassan and her officials of the detention of thousands arrested during the 2025 post-election period alone; and tens of thousands detained from 2019 to 2025. And it accuses security officials of sexual assault against opposition supporters and others.

ICC’s jurisdiction

The dossier explains that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case because Tanzania is a member. The ICC may only prosecute cases where the national courts have proved unwilling or unable to do so.

The dossier says the Tanzanian courts have proven themselves unwilling or unable to prosecute these alleged crimes because it has initiated “zero investigations” of any of the grave crimes documented in the dossier and have rewarded rather than punished official perpetrators of these crimes.

And the charge adds that the ICC’s Rome Statute allows Hassan and her superior officers – including the army, police and intelligence chiefs – to be charged for these crimes against humanity under the ICC principle of “command responsibility” of superior officers for the actions of forces under their direct control.

It says the killings during the post-election period of 30 October to 6 November 2025 were “carried out pursuant to orders from the highest levels of government, including President Hassan’s explicit authorisation to ‘take all actions and involve all security agencies’”. The report adds that the large scale of the killings also constituted the ICC crime of extermination.

“This was not crowding control that accidentally resulted in deaths; it was deliberate killing.” Photographic evidence shows that security forces opened fire without warning, aimed at chests and heads and continued firing even as protesters fled.

Targeted assassinations

The report also accuses Hassan and her government of several targeted assassinations of opposition leaders before the elections, including senior Chadema strategist Ally Kibao, who was abducted from a bus in Dar es Salaam on 6 September 2024. His body was discovered the following day in a forest near the Indian Ocean, his face burned with acid.

And the report accuses Hassan and her senior officials of the ICC crime of “enforced disappearance”, noting that UN independent experts had documented more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance between 2019 and June 2025.

These include: Humphrey Pole Pole, a former Tanzanian ambassador to Russia and later a vocal critic of the government, was abducted from his home on 6 October 2025, just three weeks before the election, and has not been seen since; at least 50 members of the Uamsho Muslim clerical movement were abducted in 2013 and held in enforced disappearance for eight years before charges were dropped in June 2021.

Read more: If 10,000 Tanzanians really are dead, international apathy is not an option

The report adds that scores of individuals were arrested by security forces and then disappeared over the 2025 election period.

And it says “torture is systematically employed by Tanzanian security forces” against political opponents.

It cites the cases of Boniface Mwangi, a prominent Kenyan human rights activist, and Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan lawyer and journalist, who travelled to Tanzania on 19 May 2025 to observe the treason trial of Chadema leader Tundu Lissu. They were arrested together the same day.

Both were stripped naked and brutally beaten. Atuhaire was also sexually assaulted. The report notes: “Sexual violence has been systematically employed as a weapon of repression in Tanzania.”

The accusation against Hassan and her officials also includes their persecution of Maasai Indigenous communities in northern Tanzania, “based on ethnic and cultural grounds”. It says the government “has systematically violated Maasai rights to their ancestral lands, traditional livelihoods, and cultural practices through forced evictions, violence, and denial of political participation”.

It adds that the June 2022 evictions in Loliondo were “particularly brutal”.

Internet blackout

Unusually for an ICC indictment, this dossier also cites the internet blackout – from 29 October to 4 November – as a crime against humanity, mainly because it says the blackout “facilitated the commission of other crimes against humanity including murder, torture, and enforced disappearance”.

It also hindered citizens from seeking treatment for those injured by security forces. And it violated article 7(1)(k) of the ICC’s Rome Statute, which prohibits intentionally causing “great suffering, or serious injury to… mental… health” because it prevented many Tanzanians from finding out whether their loved ones had been killed or injured in the protests.

The report notes that article 7(1) of the statute defines crimes against humanity as any of 11 enumerated acts – including murder, extermination, torture, rape and abduction – “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.

It argues that the crimes it alleges were widespread as the security force attacks affected a number of regions of Tanzania and thousands of victims. The systematic nature of the attacks was demonstrated by the simultaneous deployment of security forces across a number of regions, the coordinated internet shutdown, the coordinated mass killings in a number of cities simultaneously, the systematic disposal of bodies and the mass arrests and the coordination of several agencies involved in the attack.

And the report says the Rome Statute also requires that an attack be “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organisational policy” to conduct the attack. “The policy need not be formally documented but can be inferred from the totality of circumstances.”

It can be inferred that the attacks were a policy decision because Hassan explicitly authorised the attack with her public statement on 1 November 2025, as she was sworn in, that “we will take all actions and involve all security agencies” to suppress protests.

Read more: Youth-led uprisings in Tanzania signal growing discontent with electoral injustices and governance issues

The report adds that the policy can also be inferred from the continuity of the same methods, such as enforced disappearance, torture and targeted killings, from the previous John Magufuli administration to Hassan’s administration.

The policy can also be inferred from the promotion of officials responsible for atrocities and the allocation of substantial state resources to the attack, including deployment of military units with armoured vehicles across a number of regions, sustained internet shutdown requiring coordination with telecommunications companies, operation of secret detention facilities, disposal operations for bodies.

The report also indicts the national intelligence director, the Dar es Salaam police commander, the defence force chief and the inspector-general of police for complicity in the attacks on protesters.

It also cites the chief of the electoral commission for “facilitating electoral fraud”. It cites a judge for “facilitation of politically motivated prosecutions”, including being a potential perpetrator in the treason prosecution of Lissu.

It indicts the minister of information for the internet shutdown as well as several regional security force commanders.

The document, seen by Daily Maverick, only mentions Hassan by name. For legal reasons, the names of her officials are redacted, though they could be deduced from their offices.

The authors request the ICC to open a preliminary examination and to pursue investigation and prosecution urgently, since a delay will allow crimes to continue, evidence to be destroyed and witnesses to be silenced. DM