Germany’s ambassador flew out of Chad late Saturday after the central African nation’s military leadership gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
(Bloomberg) —
Germany’s ambassador flew out of Chad late Saturday after the central African nation’s military leadership gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
Jan-Christian Gordon Kricke was expelled for being “impolite” and “disrespecting diplomatic practice,” government spokesman Aziz Mahamat Saleh said in a short statement posted on Twitter late Friday.
The reasons given by Chad to justify the ouster are “completely incomprehensible,” a spokesman for Germany’s foreign affairs ministry said in an emailed statement.
The decision shouldn’t be seen as a disruption in the relations between the countries, Chad’s foreign ministry said in a separate statement. Saleh couldn’t be reached for a comment. A spokesman for Chad’s foreign ministry declined to comment further.
Kricke, who served as Germany’s ambassador to Chad since 2021, had expressed concerns over delays to elections that would restore democracy following a military coup that year. He also criticized the lack of transparency in investigations into violent opposition protests in 2022, according to Yamingue Betinbye, a political analyst with think tank Centre de Recherches en Anthropologie et Sciences Humaines.
On Oct. 20, security forces fired on protesters in several cities across Chad, including the capital N’Djamena, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens of others, according to Human Rights Watch.
Chad is a crucial ally to the US and European Union in the fight against extremism in the region. It’s also seen as a buffer to prevent the unrest in its northern neighbor Libya from spreading south.
Chad last year became the first country to reach an debt restructuring deal under the G20 Common Framework with its main creditor Glencore Plc. The deal unlocked a $570 million disbursement from the International Monetary Fund.
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