A popular Angolan TikTok influencer, Ana da Silva Miguel, popularly known as Neth Nahara, has been sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly insulting President João Lourenço on the platform.
Nahara was initially sentenced by a court to six months in August but an appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the sentence was too lenient and raised it to two years.
The appeals court which sat in the capital, Luanda, held that Nahara had used offensive words against the president, and the fact that she had the ability to influence public opinion made her conduct more objectionable and prone to influencing a greater number of people, especially the youths.
During the hearing, the Tiktok influencer had pleaded for leniency on the grounds that she was a “first-time offender, a mother of young children, and regretted her remarks”, but the court dismissed her plea, and apart from the jail term, ordered her to pay President Lourenço $1,200 (£1,000) for the “damage caused to his reputation.”
The judge who delivered the ruling, Salomão Raimundo Kulanda, described President Lourenço as “sovereign”, and said the TikToker was aware of this and should not have denigrated him and his office.
In the video, she had blamed the president for the lack of schools, housing and employment in the oil-rich southern African state.
Local media reports that the social media influencer was
arraigned in court for allegedly using her TikTok platform to insult President Lourenço and accuse him of “anarchy and disorganisation”, while her lawyer told Portuguese news outlet, Lusa, that this was the first time a person had been convicted in Angola for something they had posted on TikTok.
The lawyer added that the ruling was final as an appeal to the Supreme Court could not be made for a sentence that was less than three years.