Hissène Habré (Chadian Arabic: حسين حبري pronounced [hiˈsɛn ˈhabre]; French pronunciation: [isɛn abʁe]; born 13 September 1942), also spelled Hissen Habré, is a Chadian politician, best known as Chad’s President from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990. He was brought to power with the support of France and the United States, who provided training, arms and financing.
In May 2016 he was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery and ordering the killing of 40,000 people, and sentenced to life in prison. He is the first former head of state to be convicted for human rights abuses in the court of another nation.
Habré was born in 1942 in Faya-Largeau, northern Chad, then a colony of France, into a family of shepherds. He is a member of theAnakaza branch of the Daza ethnic group, which is itself a branch of the Toubou ethnic group. After primary schooling, he obtained a post in the French colonial administration, where he impressed his superiors and gained a scholarship to study in France at the Institute of Overseas Higher Studies in Paris. He completed a university degree in political science in Paris, and returned to Chad in 1971. He also obtained several other degrees and earned his Doctorate from the Institute. After a further brief period of government service as a deputy prefect, he visited Tripoli and joined the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT) where he became a commander in the Second Liberation Army of FROLINAT along with Goukouni Oueddei. After Abba Siddick assumed the leadership of FROLINAT, the Second Liberation Army, first under Oueddei’s command and then under Habré’s, split from FROLINAT and became the Command Council of the Armed Forces of the North (CCFAN). In 1976 Oueddei and Habré quarreled and Habré split his newly named Armed Forces of the North (Forces Armées du Nord or FAN) from Goukouni’s followers who adopted the name of People’s Armed Forces (Forces Armées Populaires or FAP). Both FAP and FAN operated in the extreme north of Chad, drawing their fighters from the Toubou nomadic people.
Habré first came to international attention when a group under his command attacked the town of Bardaï in Tibesti, on 21 April 1974, and took three Europeans hostage, with the intention of ransoming them for money and arms. The captives were a German physician, Dr. Christoph Staewen (whose wife Elfriede was killed in the attack), and two French citizens, Françoise Claustre, an archeologist, and Marc Combe, a development worker. Staewen was released on 11 June 1974 after significant payments by West German officials. Combe escaped in 1975, but despite the intervention of the French Government, Claustre (whose husband was a senior French government official) was not released until 1 February 1977. Habré split with Oueddei, partly over this hostage-taking incident (which became known as the “Claustre affair” in France).
In August 1978 Habré was given the post of prime minister of Chad as part of an alliance with Gen. Félix Malloum. However, the power-sharing alliance did not last long. In February 1979 Habré’s forces and the national army under Malloum fought in N’Djamena. The fighting effectively left Chad without a national government. Several attempts were made by other nations to resolve the crisis, resulting in a new national government in November 1979 in which Habré was appointed Minister of Defense. However, fighting resumed within a matter of weeks. In December 1980 Habré was driven into exile in Sudan. In 1982 he resumed his fight against the Chadian government. FAN won control of N’Djamena on 7 June and appointed Habré as head of state.
Habré seized power in Chad and ruled from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990 by Idriss Déby. Habré’s one-party régime, like many others before his, was characterized by widespread human rights abuses and atrocities. He denies killing and torturing tens of thousands of his opponents, although in 2012 the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Senegal to put him on trial or extradite him to face justice overseas.
Following his rise to power Habré created a secret police force known as the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), under which his opponents were tortured and executed. Some methods of torture commonly used by the DDS included burning the body of the detainee with incandescent objects, spraying gas into their eyes, ears and nose, forced swallowing of water, and forcing the mouths of detainees around the exhaust pipes of running cars. Habré’s government also periodically engaged in ethnic cleansing against groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and the Zaghawa, killing and arresting group members in masses when it was perceived that their leaders posed a threat to the regime.
Habré fled, with $11 million of public money, to Senegal after being overthrown in 1990. He was placed under house arrest in 2005 until his arrest in 2013. He is accused of war crimes and torture during his eight years in power in Chad, where rights groups say that some 40,000 people were killed under his rule. Human Rights Watch claims that 1,200 were killed and 12,000 were tortured, and a domestic Chadian commission of inquiry claims that as many as 40,000 were killed and that more than 200,000 were subjected to torture. Human Rights Watch later dubbed Habré “Africa’s Pinochet.”
Human rights groups hold Habré responsible for the killing of thousands of people, but the exact number is unknown. Killings included massacres against ethnic groups in the south (1984), against the Hadjerai (1987), and against the Zaghawa (1989). Human Rights Watch charged him with having authorized tens of thousands of political murders and physical torture. Habré had been called “the African Pinochet,”in reference to former Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet.
The government of Idriss Deby established a Commission of Inquiry into the Crimes and Misappropriations Committed by Ex-President Habré, His Accomplices and/or Accessories in 1990, which reported that 40,000 people had been killed, but did not follow up on its recommendations.
Between 1993 and 2003, Belgium had universal jurisdiction legislation (the Belgian War Crimes Law) allowing the most serious violations of human rights to be tried in national as well as international courts, without any direct connection to the country of the alleged perpetrator, the victims or where the crimes took place. Despite the repeal of the legislation, investigations against Habré went ahead and in September 2005 he was indicted for crimes against humanity, torture, war crimes and other human rights violations. Senegal, where Habré had been in exile for 17 years, had Habré under nominal house arrest in Dakar.
On 17 March 2006, the European Parliament demanded that Senegal turn over Habré to Belgium to be tried. Senegal did not comply, and it at first refused extradition demands from the African Union which arose after Belgium asked to try Habré. The Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights expressed its approval of the decision. If he were to be turned over, he would have become the first former dictator to be extradited by a third-party country to stand trial for human rights abuses. In 2007, Senegal set up its own special war-crimes court to try Habré under pressure from the African Union. On April 8, 2008, the National Assembly of Senegal voted to amend the constitution to clear the way for Habré to be prosecuted in Senegal; Ibrahima Gueye was appointed as trial coordinator in May 2008. A joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate voted in July 2008 to approve a bill empowering Senegalese courts to try people for crimes committed in other countries and for crimes that were committed more than ten years beforehand; this made it constitutionally possible to try Habré. Senegalese Minister of Justice Madicke Niang appointed four investigative judges on this occasion.
On August 15, 2008, a Chadian court sentenced Habré to death in absentia for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with allegations that he had worked with rebels inside Chad to oust Déby.François Serres, a lawyer for Habré, criticized this trial on 22 August for unfairness and secrecy. According to Serres, the accusation on which the trial was based was previously unknown and Habré had not received any notification of the trial. 14 victims filed new complaints with a Senegalese prosecutor on 16 September, accusing Habré of crimes against humanity and torture.
The Senegalese government added an amendment in 2008, which would allow Habré to be tried in court. Senegal later changed their position, however, requesting 27 million euros in funding from the international community before going through with the trial. This prompted Belgium to pressure the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to force Senegal to either extradite Habré to Belgium or to proceed with the trial. This request was denied by the ICJ.
In November 2010, the court of justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ruled that Senegal could not hold trial in the matter through local court only, and asked for the creation of a special tribunal on the matter of Habré’s prosecution. In April 2011, after initial reticence, Senegal agreed to the creation of an ad hoc tribunal in collaboration with the African Union, the Chadian state and with international funding.
Senegal changed their position again however, walking out during discussions on establishing the court on 30 May 2011 without explanation. The African union commission on Habré, in preparation for their next summit on June 30 , published a report urging to press Senegal to extradite Habré to Belgium.
On July 8, 2011, Senegal officials announced that Habré would be extradited to Chad on July 11 but this was subsequently halted. In July 2012, the ICJ ruled that Senegal must start Habré’s trial “without delay”. Amnesty International called on Senegal to abide by the ICJ’s ruling, calling it “a victory for victims that’s long overdue”. A trial by the International Criminal Court (ICC) was ruled out, because the crimes took place before the ICC was fully established in 2002, and its jurisdiction is limited to events that took place after that date.
In December 2012, the Parliament of Senegal passed a law allowing for the creation of an international tribunal in Senegal to try Habre. The judges of the tribunal would be appointed by the African Union, and come from elsewhere in Africa.
On June 30, 2013, Habré was arrested in Senegal by the Senegalese police. Chadian President Idriss Deby said of his arrest that it was a step towards “an Africa free of all evil, an Africa stripped of all dictatorships.” Senegal’s court, set up with the African Union, charged him with crimes against humanity and torture. That year he was also sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity by a Chadian court.
On 20 July 2015 the trial started. Waiting for the trial to open, Habré shouted: “Down with imperialists. [The trial] is a farce by rotten Senegalese politicians. African traitors. Valet of America”. After that Habré was taken out of the courtroom and the trial began without him. In July 2015 Habré’s trial was postponed to 7 September 2015, after his lawyers refused to participate in court.
On May 30, 2016, the Extraordinary African Chambers found Habré guilty of rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people during his tenure as Chadian president and sentenced him to life in prison. The verdict marked the first time an African Union-backed court convicted a former ruler for human-rights abuses and the first time that the courts of one country have prosecuted the former ruler of another country for crimes against humanity.