Former Chadian president Hissene Habre is to make history today when he is tried in Senegal over his regime’s brutality — the first time a despot from one African country has been called to account by another.
Once dubbed Africa’s Pinochet, the 72-year-old has been in custody in Senegal since his arrest in June 2013 at the home he shared with his wife and children.
Rights groups say 40,000 people were killed during his eight years in power under a regime marked by fierce repression of his opponents and the targeting of rival ethnic groups.
Photo: Reuters
Habre, who held power between 1982 and 1990, is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture. He is to be tried by the Extraordinary African Chambers, a special court established by the African Union under an agreement with Senegal. The court is led by a judge from Burkina Faso.
Delayed for years by Senegal, where Habre has lived since being ousted in 1990, the hearings are to set a historic precedent as until now African leaders accused of atrocities have been tried in international courts.
They come at a time when relations between African Union (AU) members and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are at an all-time low, a month after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s escape from an international arrest warrant in South Africa. The AU has accused the ICC of targeting only African leaders, highlighting that major powers such as Russia, China and the US have refused to place themselves under The Hague-based court’s jurisdiction.
“It’s one thing for African presidents or African leaders to complain about abusive African leaders being sent to The Hague. It’s another to show they can be tried in Africa,” said US lawyer Reed Brody, the lead investigator for Human Rights Watch in the case. “This is a test case, in a way, for African justice.”
Habre refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the court and has decided not to cooperate with the hearings, one of his lawyers, Ibrahima Diawara, said on Thursday.
“Appearing in a trial is a right, not an obligation,” Diawara said, adding that his client’s health had been improving after a heart attack in June, but that he would not appear and had instructed his lawyers not to take part.
Chief prosecutor Mbacke Fall says his team have heard from almost 2,500 victims and 60 witnesses since the opening of the investigation against Habre in July 2013.
More than 4,000 direct or indirect victims have been registered as civil parties to the case and the court is scheduled to hear from 100 witnesses over three months.
The nine million euro (US$9.8 million) trial is to be filmed and released offline, according to Fall.
If Habre is convicted, he can expect anything from 30 years to life with hard labor, to be served in Senegal or another African Union country. After sentencing a second phase of the hearings would rule on civil compensation claims.
Assane Dioma Ndiaye, a lawyer for the civil parties, described the case as historic and underlined the huge expectations of the victims.
“There could have been no impunity in this case,” he said.
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