According to statements made by Chad’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mahamat Saleh Annadif to AFP on Sunday, the German ambassador to Chad was expelled from the country on Saturday evening after being declared persona non grata for “discourteous behavior.” The government of Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno asked the diplomat to leave the country within the next 48 hours because he was “not following diplomatic practices.” This request was made on Friday.
Jan Christian Gordon Kricke, the German ambassador to Chad, boarded the Air France flight on Saturday evening, according to Annadif, who spoke to AFP about the incident. Aziz Mahamat Saleh, who is the official spokesman for the government, checked the information for AFP. Officially, the authorities did not say why the people were kicked out of the country.
N’Djamena is said to blame the envoy for “interfering too much” in the “governance of the country” and for making “comments that tend to divide the Chadians,” according to a government official who spoke anonymously to AFP on behalf of the Chadian government. On Friday, a representative from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was “absolutely not clear” why the country’s ambassador, who had been in his job since July 2021, was kicked out.
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