Huma Rights Watch: Former president Hissene Habre must be tried.
Huma Rights Watch: Former president Hissene Habre must be tried.
African Union Summit: Hissène Habré must be tried
(Banjul, June 29, 2006) – The African Union Assembly
must call on Senegal to fulfill its international
legal commitments and ensure that the exiled former
president of Chad, Hissène Habré, is promptly tried
for the crimes of which he is accused, the Campaign
Against Impunity said today.
http://www.rpgguinee.org/illustration/habre.jpg
African Union (A.U.) leaders meeting in Banjul, The
Gambia, on July 1 are expected to consider a
confidential report by a panel of experts, whose names
have never been disclosed, that was requested “to
consider all aspects and implications of the Hissène
Habré case as well the options available for his
trial.”

The panel has met in secret, without any consultation
with civil society or Hissène Habré’s victims. Members
of the Campaign Against Impunity are holding news
conferences today in 17 African countries to demand
that Habré be tried.

“The African Union has to tell Senegal to prosecute
Hissène Habré or extradite him to face justice before
a court with full guarantee of impartiality and
independence,” said Jacqueline Moudeina, president of
the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense
of Human Rights, a group that is part of the Campaign
Against Impunity. “The African Union should choose
justice, not impunity.”

Habré, who fled to Senegal in 1990 after an eight-year
rule marked by serious and widespread human rights
violations, was first indicted in 2000 in Senegal.
After Senegalese courts ruled that he could not be
tried there, and no African state stepped forward to
do so, Habré’s victims pursued justice by turning to
Belgium, which indicted him in September 2005.

In November 2005, after a Senegalese court refused to
rule on his extradition, the Senegalese government
asked the A.U. Assembly to decide the matter. The
assembly appointed a committee of jurists to consider
all aspects and implications of the case, as well as
options for his trial to the 7th Ordinary Session of
the Assembly in Banjul.

Also in November 2005, the
Africa-Caribbean-Pacific/European Union (ACP/EU)
organization stressed the need to bring Hissène Habré
to justice. On November 18, 2005, the United Nations
special rapporteur on torture called on the government
of Senegal to extradite Hissène Habré expeditiously to
Belgium.

The 1984 U.N. Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
which Senegal ratified in 1986, obliges states to
investigate, and, if there is sufficient admissible
evidence, to either prosecute or extradite alleged
torturers who enter its territory. In May 2006, the
United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT)
condemned Senegal for failing to try Habré and
requested that Senegal ensure Habré’s trial or
extradition. (A copy of the ruling in French can be
found here)

“Habré’s victims have been fighting for 16 years to
see justice done,” said Kolawole Olaniyan, director of
Amnesty International’s Africa Programme, also part of
the Campaign Against Impunity. “It is time for Habré
to face trial for his alleged crimes.”

“Bringing Habré to justice will be entirely consistent
with the Constitutive Act of the African Union, which
explicitly requires the organization to tackle the
problem of impunity in Africa,” said Chidi Anselm
Odinkalu, director of the Africa Programme at Open
Society Justice Initiative.

“Habré’s trial would be a milestone in the fight to
hold the perpetrators of crimes under international
law, such as torture, criminally responsible for their
crimes,” said Reed Brody, special counsel at Human
Rights Watch, also part of the Campaign Against
Impunity. “Whether Hissène Habré is to be tried in
Belgium or elsewhere, African leaders must urge
Senegal to act consistently with its obligations under international law and the ruling of the U.N. Committee
against Torture – to either prosecute Hissène Habré or
extradite him to a country where he can face a prompt
and fair trial for the crimes he is accused of,
without the imposition of the death penalty.”

Background

Hissène Habré ruled Chad from 1982 until 1990, when he
was deposed by current President Idriss Déby Itno and
fled to Senegal, which has given him a safe haven from
criminal prosecution for 16 years now. His one-party
government was marked by allegations of war crimes and
crimes against humanity, including torture. Habré’s
government periodically targeted various ethnic
groups, killing and arresting group members en masse
when he believed that their leaders posed a threat to
his government. Files of Habré’s political police, the
DDS (Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité)
reveal the names of 1,208 persons who died in
detention. A total of 12,321 victims of human rights
violations were mentioned.

In February 2000, a Senegalese court charged Habré
with torture and crimes against humanity and placed
him under house arrest. But in March 2001, Senegal’s
highest court said that Habré could not stand trial in
Senegal for crimes allegedly committed elsewhere.
Habré’s victims immediately announced that they would
seek Habré’s extradition to Belgium, where 21 of
Habré’s victims had filed suit. President Abdoulaye
Wade of Senegal then stated that he would hold Habré
in Senegal and that “if a country capable of
organizing a fair trial – there is talk of Belgium –
wants him, I do not foresee any obstacle.”

Last September, after a four-year investigation, a
Belgian judge issued an international arrest warrant
charging Habré with crimes against humanity, war
crimes, and torture. Pursuant to the arrest warrant
and a Belgian extradition request, Senegalese
authorities arrested Habré on November 15. After a
Senegalese court refused to rule on the extradition
request, Senegal announced that it had asked the
January summit of the African Union Assembly to
recommend “the competent jurisdiction” for the trial
of Habré. That summit set up a Committee of Eminent
African Jurists to consider the options for Habré’s
trial and to report back at the African Union summit
in July in Banjul, The Gambia.

The Coalition Against Impunity is a coalition made up
of over 300 African and international civil society
groups formed to combat impunity in Africa.


Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 (Archive on Thursday, June 29, 2006)
Posted by PNMBAI  Contributed by PNMBAI
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