BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
A Lome court on Tuesday sentenced 14 people to 10 years in prison for taking part in banned protests against the Gnassingbe dynasty that has ruled Togo for more than five decades.
The criminal court found the accused, who have been in jail since their arrest, guilty of plotting against state security and criminal conspiracy for their role in the protest in December 2018.
The defendants included Irish-Togolese national Abdoul Aziz Goma, whose jailing has been condemned by the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor.
Goma, who had lived in Ireland since the 1990s, was not present at the protest, but had paid for lodgings for demonstrators from other parts of the country, according to Lawlor, who says he has been tortured.
Four other accused who have fled the west African country were sentenced in absentia to 20 years at the end of the one-day trial.
Protesters took to the streets in 2017 and 2018 in Togo to condemn the hold on power of the Gnassingbe family, which has ruled the country of approximately eight million people since Gnassingbe Eyadema, father of current president Faure Gnassingbe, took control in a 1967 coup.
Authorities responded to the demonstrations with a crackdown that left several dead.
According to opposition and civil society groups, 92 people who were arrested over the protests are still being jailed.
