The demand to declare Tanzania’s Intelligence and Security Service a terrorist organisation is no longer angry noise from the streets, since TISS has been linked in public reporting, rights documentation and leaked attribution claims to the bloodshed that followed Samia Suluhu’s disputed election victory.

The central charge against TISS is direct and brutal, since Tanzanians were massacred after an election built on fear, barred opponents, jailed critics, internet darkness and a security machine tied by reported claims to Samia Suluhu’s son Abdul Halim Hafidh Ameir.

The Mjimwema massacre in Mwanza now stands as one of the clearest pictures of the Tanzania that Samia Suluhu and Abdul Halim have forced citizens to live under, with witnesses saying civilians far from protests were ordered down and shot.

Reuters reported more than a dozen bodies after police opened fire near a cafe, and that single scene now sits inside a larger national blood trail linked to security forces, plain clothed armed men and the feared TISS network.

CIR’s report on the election violence placed TISS directly inside the attribution debate, citing a leaked ICC submission that claimed killings were carried out under the command of Abdul Halim, who is reported to have close connection to TISS.

That is the line that removes the fog around TISS, Samia Suluhu and Abdul Halim, since the issue is no longer whether citizens merely suspect the agency, but whether the world is willing to follow the reported command chain.

TISS must be treated as a terrorist organisation since the accusations around the agency now follow the same pattern seen in terror systems, where civilians are hunted, fear is spread, bodies are hidden and political obedience is extracted through blood.

Under Samia Suluhu, and with Abdul Halim repeatedly named around TISS, Tanzania’s security state is accused of turning elections into a killing ground, opposition into a crime, protest into a death sentence and citizenship into a risk.

Human rights organisations have documented lethal force, unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, injured citizens denied medical care, wounded people arrested, bodies collected from mortuaries and a wider crackdown that makes the TISS question impossible to separate from the massacre.

TISS cannot be removed from the case when plain clothed armed men appear beside uniformed forces, when victims are shot far from protests, when bodies vanish into state hands and when Abdul Halim’s reported connection to TISS keeps appearing.

Samia Suluhu cannot pretend the massacre belongs to lower officers when her own son Abdul Halim is repeatedly dragged into the story of TISS, shadow command, abductions, killings and a security culture built to protect her rule.

The Maasai displacement file belongs in the same case against Samia Suluhu’s security state, since Human Rights Watch documented forced relocation, reduced services, beatings, shootings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrests against communities pushed from ancestral land.

TISS belongs in that wider charge since an intelligence agency tied to political repression cannot be treated as clean when the state it serves uses force, surveillance, fear and silence against indigenous communities, opposition supporters and critics.

The Maria Sarungi Tsehai abduction in Nairobi opened another window into the same feared machine, with her husband accusing TISS of being behind the armed kidnapping of a Tanzanian activist outside the country.

The Humphrey Polepole case added another dark layer around Samia Suluhu, Abdul Halim and TISS, after Africa Confidential reported that fingers were pointing at Abdul Halim and his influence over TISS following Polepole’s alleged abduction.

This is why the world must stop treating TISS as a normal intelligence partner and start treating it as an accused terror network operating under Samia Suluhu’s political cover and Abdul Halim’s reported shadow control.

A terrorist organisation is known by what it does to civilians, and the case against TISS now rests on killings, abductions, disappearances, forced silence, political terror and the repeated use of fear against Tanzanian citizens.

TISS must be declared a terrorist organisation since the election massacre was not a street clash, not a bad policing week and not a public order mistake, but a national slaughter tied to a security system around Samia Suluhu and Abdul Halim.

Every foreign government still sharing intelligence with TISS is now dealing with an agency named in claims around killings, linked to political terror and tied to a regime whose election victory was soaked in blood.

Every regional body still treating Samia Suluhu as legitimate must explain why Abdul Halim’s reported grip around TISS is being ignored when Tanzanian families are searching for bodies, justice and the truth. Every human rights body must place TISS at the centre of the Tanzania file, from election killings and abductions to Maasai displacement and cross border intimidation of activists.

Tanzania is not facing a vague security problem anymore, since the name TISS now sits beside Samia Suluhu and Abdul Halim in the political memory of a massacre that the region cannot bury.

The blood of the election massacre, the pain of the Maasai, the abduction claims, the missing bodies and the fear around critics all point back to one demand.

TISS must be declared a terrorist organisation, and Samia Suluhu with Abdul Halim must be treated as the political controllers of the agency accused of turning Tanzania into a crime scene.