Habre convicted following extraordinary trial

Former Chad President Hissene Habre was today (Monday) convicted of crimes against humanity for ordering the killing and torture of thousands of political opponents during his eight-year rule that began in 1982. Legalbrief reports that the 73-year-old was sentenced by the Special African Chamber in Senegal to life imprisonment. The verdict capped a mammoth battle by victims and rights campaigners to bring the former strongman to justice in Senegal, where he fled after being toppled in a 1990 coup in the central African nation. ‘This court finds you guilty of crimes against humanity, rape, forced slavery, and kidnapping,’ said Gberdao Gustave Kam, the Burkinabe president of the court. A report on the Al Jazeera site notes that he gave Habre 15 days to appeal against the sentence. The former strongman raised his arms into the air on hearing the sentence and shouted ‘Down with France-afrique’, referring to the term used for France's continuing influence on its former colonies. It marked the first trial in which the courts of one country prosecuted the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but the case was transferred to Belgium and then finally back to Senegal after survivors and their supporters campaigned furiously. More than 90 witnesses testified during the marathon trial. Initially, there were concerns that the trial would not go ahead after Habre was dragged in to court, kicking and shouting and labelling the judges as ‘valets of America’. The Independent reports that the accusation had a certain irony given that Habré had reportedly been propped up by the Reagan-era CIA, which viewed him as 'the quintessential desert warrior' and a useful bulwark against Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. The trial was held at the Extraordinary African Chambers which was created in 2013 in an attempt to build an African system of continent-wide justice amid criticism that The Hague-based International Criminal Court has unfairly targeted African leaders.