The United States commends the Government of Senegal and the African Union for bringing former Chadian President Hissène Habré before the Extraordinary African Chambers of Senegal.
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Habre was overthrown by rebel troops in Chad in December 1990 and fled to Senegal, where he was arrested in June 2013 and has since been in custody.
Habre’s defence lawyers have dismissed the tribunal as a political tool of his enemies, and say the government of Deby, who removed Habre from office, is the court’s largest donor. At least half a dozen guards rushed to remove him. “Even if the accused refuses to collaborate with the appointed lawyers for him, the procedure will continue”, said Judge Gberdao Gustave Kam.
A landmark trial against Chadian ex-president Hissene Habre began on Monday in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, with at least 2 500 of the dictator’s victims submitting their testimonies. Habre, 72, spent more than two decades in exile in Senegal before being arrested in 2013.
During his years in power between 1982 and 1990, human rights groups say, 40,000 people were killed under Habre’s regime, which was known for its fierce repression of opponents and for targeting rival ethnic groups.
As a signal of our support for these proceedings, U.S. Ambassador to Senegal James Zumwalt and Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Steven Rapp attended the opening of the trial on Monday morning local time in Dakar.
“Rarely do we find so much evidence of crimes”, said Reed Brody of HRW, the New York-based watchdog.
Parallels were later drawn with the attempts to get the former Chilean military leader Augusto Pinochet extradited and put on trial for crimes against humanity in Spain in 1998, leading him to to be called “Africa’s Pinochet”.
“We brought Habre in by force”, said a source cited by the daily.
The AU had mandated Senegal to try Mr Habre in July 2006, but the country stalled the process for years under former president Abdoulaye Wade, who was defeated in 2012 elections.
It is also the first time the courts of one country are prosecuting the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes.
This will be the first trial in Africa of a universal jurisdiction case, in which a country’s national courts can prosecute the most serious crimes committed overseas, by a foreigner and against foreign victims, said Human Rights Watch.
“So there are a lot of historical aspects to this”.
“The African Union believes that the worldwide Criminal Court metes out selective justice and pursues only Africans”, Marcel Mendy, a spokesman for the Senegalese chambers, told a news conference in Dakar on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. Judges also ordered that he be held pending trial.
As a part of the trial, Habre will have to see some of his victims face to face, as around 100 people imprisoned and tortured under his rule are set to testify at the trial. “This trial is important to us, and I am going to follow it with great attention”.
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“This is Africa judging Africa”, Senegal’s Justice Minister Sikidi Kaba said of Habre’s case.
