The Tanzanian opposition figure, Tundu Lissu, on Monday returned from exile to campaign against the country’s strongman.
This is coming three years after he survived being shot 16 times in an assassination attempt.
“I came back from the dead,” Lissu, told The Telegraph before his flight from Europe to Dar-es-Salaam.
“Those who tried to kill me are still at large. My life is at risk, but I’m going all the same.”
When President John Magufuli came to power in the East Africa nation in 2015, Lissu, a human rights lawyer and member of parliament, became one of his fiercest and most vocal opponents.
The government tried to shut Lissu up. But despite being arrested half a dozen times and charging him with sedition, the lawyer refused to be silent in the face of what he saw as the wholesale rollback of Tanzanian democracy.
In September 2017, unknown gunmen ambushed Lissu in the car park of his parliamentary residence in the capital, Dodoma.
The guards, who usually protected the complex, were curiously absent and the gunmen sprayed Lissu’s car with 30 Kalashnikov rounds.
The attack left the MP near dead in a coma. His Chadema political party rushed him out of the country to Kenya and on to Belgium for medical treatment.
.The Telegraph
