Political Career From The 1980s To The 1990s
Under Denis Sassou Nguesso, the M-22 was partially rehabilitated and regained influence beginning in 1980, to the point that some M-22 figures were considered part of "the backbone" of the PCT regime. By that time, the M-22 was considerably less radical, although still ideologically Marxist. Like the PCT in general, the M-22 was "clearly dominated by northerners", and it was the northern M-22 leaders, rather than southerners like Ndalla, who most clearly benefited from Sassou Nguesso's favor.
Ndalla was arrested prior to a PCT party congress in 1984. At the time, Sassou Nguesso was trying to assert his authority in the PCT leadership against a hard-line, pro-Soviet faction led by François-Xavier Katali, and it was believed that Sassou Nguesso wanted to prevent Ndalla from encouraging other M-22 southerners to support Katali's faction. The arrest of Ndalla was part of a series of successful moves by Sassou Nguesso in 1984, culminating in his victory over the Katali faction at the party congress.
While in detention, Ndalla was recorded on video saying that Jean-Pierre Thystère Tchicaya, a key figure in the PCT regime, had orchestrated bomb attacks that occurred in Brazzaville in 1982. Those bomb attacks killed nine people and wounded 92 others. Sassou Nguesso used Ndalla's claim as evidence when he launched a sudden attack on Thystère Tchicaya at the 1984 congress. Although Ndalla told a party commission sent to investigate the matter that his incriminating statements were untrue and that he had only made them to avoid being tortured, Thystère Tchicaya was removed from the PCT leadership on the basis of Ndalla's claim.
Ndalla was tried before the Revolutionary Court of Justice for his alleged role in the 1982 bomb attacks and was sentenced to death in August 1986. Ndalla had no right to appeal the decision, which was criticized by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights on the grounds that the trial was unfair and the evidence of guilt was insufficient. The death sentence was never carried out, however, and Sassou Nguesso commuted Ndalla's sentence to life imprisonment with hard labor as a gesture of clemency to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1963 revolution in August 1988.
Two years later, on the 27th anniversary of the revolution, Sassou Nguesso granted Ndalla and other political prisoners an amnesty on 14 August 1990; he was accordingly released from prison on 15 August. By that time, Sassou Nguesso and the PCT regime were struggling to maintain control of the country amidst increasingly vocal demands for democratic reform, and Ndalla wasted no time in returning to the political stage by adding his voice to those calling for reform. As a delegate to the February–June 1991 Sovereign National Conference, Ndalla criticized the record of the PCT regime.
Read more about this topic: Claude-Ernest Ndalla
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