Chad demands answers after senior official burns alive

"I am in danger, friends", Fulbert Mouanodji wrote on his Facebook on Friday - the next day, the civil servant was found dead, burned alive with gasoline.  

The body of Mouanodji, who was the former chief of staff for the Ennedi Est Governor, was discovered in Abéché in Eastern Chad on Saturday.

Images of his burned and undressed remains were quickly shared on social media, provoking speculation and anger among Chadians. 

At a press conference on Sunday, the Abéché Attorney General ruled out any foul play and said that Mouanodji had killed himself.

"What happened was suicide. He burned himself in full view of people. The investigation that the court opened is not over. We are now at the beginning of the investigation. These people are stirring up this affair. They are lying," the Attorney General said.

However, that explanation has been firmly rejected by Mouanodji’s family and many Chadians online.

The day before he was found dead, Mouanodji wrote on his Facebook profile that he was in danger, and that has made several commentators on X speculate if the high-ranking official was murdered.

In screenshots shared by local news media, Tchad One, which allegedly show a message exchange between Mouanodji and a friend on Friday, Mouanodji writes that he is being followed by agents of Chad’s secret service, ANS, into a bus from N'Djamena to Amdjarass. 

His family believes that it was on this journey that he was assassinated, "If he had wanted to commit suicide, he would have done it in Ndjamena, with his family," Mouanodji’s younger sister, Felicité Mouandandgodi, told RFI.

Mouanodji decided to flee N'Djamena after his conversation at a bar about Chad’s socio-political situation was leaked, DW reports.

In the screenshots, Mouanodji allegedly writes that ANS agents visited his house the day after the conversation, when he was not at home. 

”Fulbert warned us that he was in danger. He left messages stating that he was being followed by Secret Service agents and that he was on the same bus as them. When we arrived in Abéché, it turned out that Gilbert was dead. It was murder, short and simple," Mouanodji’s cousin, Nadjiam Dingam, said. 

The family has announced their intention to contact the N'Djamena public prosecutor's office to request further investigations into Mouanodji’s death.