Ex-chad dictator Habre dies
DAKAR, Senegal – Chad’s former dictator Hissene Habre, the first former head of state to be convicted of crimes against humanity by an African court after his government was accused of killing tens of thousands of people, died Tuesday in Senegal. He was 79.
Habre, whose case for years showcased Africa’s reluctance to put its despots on trial as he lived in luxurious exile, had recently contracted COVID-19, according to local media reports. His death at a Dakar hospital was confirmed by Jean Bertrand Bocande, director of the penitentiary administration.
The former dictator, first arrested in 2013, had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2016 but ultimately served about five years in prison following his conviction.
Human rights activists say Chad was a ruthless, one-party state under Habre’s rule from 1982 to 1990. A fearsome security service headed by members of Habre’s Gorane ethnic group was placed in every village, documenting even the slightest transgressions against the regime, they said.
The commission concluded that Habre’s government oversaw 40,000 killings.
“Hissene Habre will go down in history as one of the world’s most pitiless dictators, a man who slaughtered his own people, burned down entire villages, sent women to serve as sexual slaves for his troops and built clandestine dungeons to inflict medieval torture on his enemies,” tweeted Reed Brody, a Human Rights Watch lawyer who worked to bring Habre to justice.