Leading Kenyan lawyer and former attorney of the country, Martha Karua, said she had been deported from Tanzania to prevent her from participating in the court case of opposition leader Tundu Lissu.
Two colleagues who accompanied her were reportedly detained and deported after flying from neighboring Kenya.
Former Kenya Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and other prominent rights activists later traveled on Lissu's case, saying they were stopped and detained at the airport. Tanzanian authorities have not commented yet.
Lissu, the leader of Tanzania's main opposition party, appeared in court on Monday after being charged with treason last month.
Kenya's top foreign affairs official Korir Sing'oei “strongly urged” Tanzanian authorities to release Mutunga and his delegation.
Karua is a respected human rights advocate and a voice critic of what she calls East Africa’s “democracy slides backward.”
She also represents Kizza Besigye, an opposition politician in Ugandan, who was kidnapped in Kenya last year and brought back to his home country to face treason.
Like Lissu, he denied the allegations, believing they were politically motivated.
Karua served as Kenya’s Attorney General from 2005 to 2009 and was in the election-lost presidential bid for former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
She formed her own opposition party, the People's Liberation Party (PLP), earlier this year.
PLP said she was “an hourly interrogation” with fellow Kenyan lawyer Gloria Kimani and human rights activist Lynn Ngugi before being deported.
Chadma Secretary General John Mnyika condemned the incident: “The solution to concealing the shame of a false treason case is not to detain a foreign lawyer, but to abandon the case altogether.”
The Tanzanian Human Rights Defenders League said it was shocked that it was called “arbitrary arrest” because Karua was allowed to enter Tanzania to observe the lawsuit when Lissu appeared in court on April 15.
The former Chief Justice of Kenya traveled with lawyers Hussein Khalid and Hanifa Adan, an outstanding organizer of the youth-led Gen Z protests.
Khalid posted clips of three of them at Dar Es Salam Airport, saying they were “stopped” and took their passports. He said their trip was “integrated with Tanzanian lawyers and human rights defenders”.
Ms. Adam said: “We have been detained at Julius Nyrell International Airport and we are not told why. It's totally ridiculous and trivial. It's 3 a.m. and it's cold here…we're all united with Lissu mentioned in court today.”
Another activist, Boniface Mwangi, said that on Sunday night, armed personnel who claimed to be police appeared in his hotel room in Dar es Salaam.
He said they left and refused to open the door and asked them to identify themselves before moving to the hotel lobby.
“My luggage was packed and when the Tanzanian lawyer who followed up on the matter arrived, I was ready to go with those people. For the moment, I'll stay.”
Human rights groups are increasingly concerned about the crackdown on opposition in Tanzania, ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in October.
Lissu cannot seek bail because he is charged with treason, which is the maximum sentence of death.
He was assassinated in 2017 after being shot 16 times.
Opposition leaders were arrested in April after holding a rally under “no reform, no elections.”
He demanded a comprehensive change, saying that current laws in Tanzania do not allow free elections. The government denies the allegations.
Since his arrest, his Chadema party has refused to comply with the election commission's request to sign a code of conduct and has therefore been banned from participating in the October poll.
The document requires the parties and their supporters to “perform well” in the election and to “maintain peace and harmony” in the election.
Chadma regards the code of conduct as a means to curb the opposition and continues with state repression.
The CCM Party, which has ruled in Tanzania since 1977, is expected to retain power after the latest developments.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan is expected to be his presidential candidate.
She has been widely praised for giving greater political freedom when she took office in 2021 after her death in 2021.
Her critics say Tanzania has seen the repression of Magsin again. The government denies the allegations.
Other reports by Humphrey Mgonja of Nairobi
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