The judgement in the capital, Dakar, on May 30, 2016 goes down in history as a major victory for human rights campaigners in a continent where leaders often commit crimes against humanity with impunity and are rarely held to account for their actions.
Habre has become that exception and a warning gong to other dictators in Africa that the days of false immunity from the injurious consequences of their actions are over.
A former CIA collaborator, Habre was in power from 1982-90 when he was deposed by his successor and current AU Chairman, Idriss Deby. The exact number of people killed under his watch is unclear but some accounts say he was responsible for as many as 40,000 deaths in spats of ethnic cleansing throughout his rule.
He is also said to have caused the torture of 200,000 people, many of them on mere suspicions of being against him.
The non-profit Human Rights Watch though, says he killed 1,200 people. A former warder turned prison gravedigger testified before the court in Senegal that he personally buried 1,000 people killed by Habre. However, throughout the charges and the trial, Habre maintained his innocence, often trying to play the card that he was the victim and not the villain he was said to be.
The special court created to try him found him guilty of crimes against humanity, rape, sexual slavery and torture. A female witness for the crime of rape refused to testify in camera, saying she wanted the world to know what Habre had done.
“The systematic torture at such a large scale was his way of governing,” said Gberdao Gustave Kam, the presiding judge on a three-judge panel, who read a summary of the verdict.
“Hissène Habré showed no compassion toward the victims or any regret about the massacres and rapes that were committed,” the Judge added during the 90-minute session.
The case shows that Africa is capable of punishing its errant sons and daughters when the right mechanisms are constituted. Habre could not be dragged off to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague because the court’s jurisdiction applies only to crimes committed after it was constituted in 2002.
However, in 2012, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Senegal to put him on trial or extradite him to face justice abroad.
When Senegal put the matter before the AU, the African body rejected the idea and instead, ordered the West African country to try Habre through an Extraordinary African Chambers within its High Court that it would support.
Habre was subsequently arrested on June 30, 2013 by Senegalese police. He had been under house arrest since 2005. On the other hand, Belgium had sought to try Habre under the increasingly popular principle of international jurisdiction as opposed to the doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states even in the face of blatant human rights abuses.
Habre’s trial in Dakar started on July 20, 2015 as he shouted: "Down with imperialists. (The trial) is a farce by rotten Senegalese politicians. African traitors. Valet of America," apparently, playing the game that he was the victim in the dock.
Those antics now make little difference as the sentence by the two Senegalese judges and one Burkinabe Judge is unlikely to be overturned by the Appeals Chamber.
At least among the people that Habre tortured were two Senegalese businessmen, Demba Gaye and Abdourahmane Gueye. They were arrested by the dreaded Directorate of Documentation and Security (DDS) at N’Djaména airport in March 1987 when they arrived from the neighboring Central African Republic.
DDS was funded and its staff trained by the CIA. Demba Gaye died eight months later in “Cell C” of the Locaux prison – known as the “cell of death.
Abdourahmane Gueye was finally rescued and handed over by Habre’s Minister of the Interior to the Senegalese ambassador. Mr Gueye was among the first persons to testify against Habre in the African court. Thus, except before the impossible to investigate mercy of God, in the eyes of men Habre’s fate is more than sealed.
He becomes Africa’s first former head of state and “first tenant” in a presidential palace to languish for the rest of his life in a prison cell, a king turned captive with extremely bloodstained hands.
There can be no more glorious moment for Africa and frightening hour for all despots.
East African News Agency
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