Tanzania's battle-scarred opposition leader Tundu Lissu

Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu has survived an assassination attempt that left him riddled with bullets, multiple arrests and long years in exile -- all in pursuit of democracy in the east African nation.

The 58-year-old lawyer was found guilty of inciting violence and seeking to disrupt last year's election on Friday, though he was cleared of treason, that could have led to a death penalty.

As head of the main opposition party, Chadema, Lissu called for a boycott of the polls unless there were democratic reforms in Tanzania, which has mostly been dominated by the same party since independence.

"The treason case is a path to liberation," a typically defiant Lissu told supporters in court when he was charged last year and he has maintained a joyful appearance in court in the many months since then.

Having returned from exile in 2023, he expressed cautious optimism after President Samia Suluhu Hassan lifted some restrictions on the opposition and media.

But those hopes soon evaporated. Hassan's government crushed dissent, with security forces accused of a wave of abductions targeting even minor opposition voices.

Violent protests broke out during the elections in October 2025 over the lack of meaningful competition, with rights groups and the opposition saying thousands were killed by the security forces.

The government has acknowledged more than 500 deaths without saying who was responsible.

'Ripped apart' by bullets

Lissu walks with a slight limp after being shot 16 times in a 2017 attack he believes was politically motivated, requiring almost 20 operations.

He had already been arrested six times that year, and then, in September, as he pulled up outside his house in the capital Dodoma, gunmen sprayed his car with bullets.

"You have to be aware of the fact that... all my limbs, my legs, my waist, my arms, my stomach were basically ripped apart by 16 bullet shots and therefore to mend me, to put me back on my feet, took a long time," Lissu told AFP before the 2020 election.

He contested that election against then-president John Magufuli, who died just five months after winning his second term.

Immediately after the polls, Lissu said he received death threats and was arrested, but sought refuge with foreign diplomats and fled the country.

After returning in 2023, he faced multiple detentions culminating in his arrest for treason in April 2025.

Longstanding critic

Lissu was born in 1968 in a small village called Mahambe in the central region of Singida, where he helped run his family farm and took care of his father's cattle as a young boy, while attending primary school.

It was while listening to radio programmes on current affairs and reading voraciously that Lissu first got a taste for politics.

He studied law at the University of Dar es Salaam and went into human rights and environmental law, fighting for the rights of poor, rural communities, whether against industrial shrimp farming or foreign gold mining companies.

Lissu was elected as a member of parliament in 2010, working his way up to Chadema's number one.

As online chatter roared after his arrest and charge, a prominent Tanzanian lawyer, Peter Madeleka, posted on X: "Tundu Lissu is the only person in the world who survived 16 bullets. Will the TREASON case succeed in ending his life?"

Activist Maria Sarungi said Hassan's actions against Lissu had backfired.

"She hasn't brought him down, she has elevated him," she said.

"Tundu Lissu is like water -- if you don't drink it, you'll bathe in it."