Tunisia on Friday handed opponents of President Kais Saied lengthy jail terms after convicting them of plotting against state security.

Issam Chebbi and Jawhar Ben Mbarek of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition, as well as lawyer Ridha Belhaj and activist Chaima Issa, were sentenced to 18 years behind bars, their lawyer said.

Businessman Kamel Eltaief received the harshest penalty of 66 years in prison.

They are among forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, who who were being prosecuted on security and terrorism charges.

Critics say the charges lacked merit, and only served to consolidate Saied’s power grab.

The president won re-election virtually unchallenged last year after the jailing or disqualification on flimsy grounds of his opponents.

Saied has ruled mostly by decree since dismissing parliament in 2022 and promulgating a revised constitution giving himself wideranging powers in 2023.

Tanzania’s main opposition party said it had failed to get access to its leader who is in detention on treason charges.

CHADEMA said Friday that the family and lawyers of Tundu Lissu had failed to see him at a Dar es salaam jail where he had been kept since his arrest on April 9.

In a statement, the party said it held the Tanzanian government and Prisons Service responsible ble for Lissu’s safety.

The Prisons Service quickly denied that Lissu had been moved from jail.

In a statement, the agency dismissed CHADEMA’s concerns as misinformation.

“We would like to inform the public that Tundu Lissu is safe and he is still detained at Keko Prison in Dar es Salaam according to the country’s laws and procedures,” the Service said in a statement.

Lissu came second in Tanzania’s 2020 presidential election. Last week, he was arrested and later charged with treason after a speech demanding election reforms.

Prosecutors said the speech called for an uprising.

With another presidential vote on the horizon, critics say President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government has ramped repression against the opposition.

This week, the election commission banned CHADEMA from taking part in elections after the party refused to sign a document pledging to obey the commission’s orders.

Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila, accused by the government of supporting rebels in the country’s east, returned to Congo from self-imposed exile on Friday, arriving in rebel-held Goma city, two of the ex-president’s associates and a rebel official said.

Kabila, who left Congo in 2023, came to Goma “to participate in peace efforts” in the conflict-hit east where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have seized large swaths of territory, including the strategic eastern city, said a close aide of the former president.

Another associate of Kabila’s and a senior M23 official also confirmed the former president’s return. The three spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the topic.

Congo’s decades-long conflict escalated in January, when the rebels advanced and seized Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February. The fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displaced.

Kabila seeks “to take part in efforts to find peace in the country,” his aide said. “Everyone is talking about Congo without the Congolese … this is not normal.”

The former president is expected to address Goma residents at some point, according to his associate, who accompanied Kabila on the trip.

It was not immediately clear how long Kabila would remain in Goma or what his plans were.

Kabila’s long-expected return is seen as controversial, with some analysts saying his presence in Goma could worsen tensions between the rebels and the Congolese government, especially amid ongoing efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.

Representatives of Congo’s government and M23 met in Qatar earlier this month as the Gulf Arab state leads renewed efforts to get both parties to return to dialogue and recommit themselves to a peace deal they each accuse the other of violating.

Christian Moleka, a political scientist at the Congolese think tank Dypol, said it was likely to have a “detonating effect on Congolese politics,” and strengthen the accusations by “those who believe that there is a connection between him and the M23 rebellion.”

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi last year accused Kabila of backing the rebels and “preparing an insurrection” with them, a claim Kabila denies.

Kabila led Congo from 2011 to 2019, taking office at the age of 29 and extending his mandate by delaying elections for two years after his term was ended in 2017. His father, former President Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in 2001.

After leaving Congo, Kabila lived in South Africa and other African countries.