The Trial of Habre’: A warning to the TPLF Gangs

Summary and Commentary by Staff reporter

In July 20, 2015, the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, stood trial on charges of crimes against humanity, torture and war crimes before the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Senegal court system.  According to Human rights Watch the chambers were established and institutionalized by Senegal and the African Union in February 2013 to “prosecute the “person or persons” most responsible for international crimes committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990, the period when Habré ruled Chad. “

Habré’s trial is the first in the world in which the courts of one country prosecute the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. It is also the first universal jurisdiction case to proceed to trial in Africa. Universal jurisdiction is a concept under international law that allows national courts to prosecute the most serious crimes even when committed abroad, by a foreigner and against foreign victims. The French newspaper Le Monde has called the case “a turning point for justice in Africa.”

 1. Who is Hissène Habré?

Habré was president of the former French colony of Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990 by Idris Déby Itno, the current president. Habré has been living in exile in Senegal ever since.
Habré’s government was responsible for widespread political killings, systematic torture, and thousands of arbitrary arrests. As is the case in Ethiopia under the TPLF rule, Habre’s  government periodically targeted civil populations, in the south and various ethnic groups such as Chadian Arabs, the Hadjerai (1987) and the Zaghawa (1989-90), killing and arresting group members en masse when it was perceived that their leaders posed a threat to Habré’s rule.
Again, as the United States supports TPLF in pretext of partnership against Terrorism, the U.S. and the West especially France supported Habré, seeing him as a bulwark against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who had expansionist designs on northern Chad. According to Human Rights Watch, “the United States under President Ronald Reagan, gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help Habré take power in 1982 and then provided his government with massive military aid.
The United States also used a clandestine base in Chad to organize captured Libyan soldiers into an anti-Gaddafi force in the late 1980s.” HRW also claims “Despite Habré’s abduction of the French anthropologist Françoise Claustre in 1974 and the murder of Captain Pierre Galloping, who went to Chad to negotiate her release in 1975, France also supported Habré after he arrived in power, providing him with arms, logistical support and information, and carrying out military operations “Manta” (1983) and “Hawk” (1986) to help Chad push back Libyan forces.”

Habré is accused of thousands of political killings and systematic torture during his rule, from 1982 to 1990, when he was deposed by the current president, Idriss Déby Itno, and fled to Senegal. After a 22-year campaign by his victims, the chambers indicted Habré in July 2013 for crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes and placed him in pretrial custody. After a 19-month investigation, judges of the Extraordinary African Chambers found that there was sufficient evidence for Habre to face trial. 

The advent of the trial, almost 25 years after Habré’s fall, is entirely due to the perseverance of Habré’s victims and their allies in nongovernmental groups.  When Habré was arrested in July 2013, the Toronto lauded “one of the world’s most patient and tenacious campaigns for justice. “The New York Times wrote that the “case has proved unusual for the tenacity of his victims, and of Human Rights Watch, in seeking to bring him to justice.”  Habré was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but for the next 12 years the Senegalese government of former President Abdoulaye Wade subjected the victims to what the Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 117 groups from 25 African countries described as an “interminable political and legal soap opera.” It was only in 2012, when Macky Sall became president of Senegal and the International Court of Justice ordered Senegal to prosecute or extradite Habré that progress was made toward the trial. 

Whatever time it may take dictators shall be brought to justice and pay the price for their crime. The trial of Harbe is a warning to al dictators on earth particularly to the TPLF gangs.