HISSENE HABRÉ sat shrouded in sunglasses, a turban and a big white boubou on May 30th, as a court in Senegal found him guilty of crimes against humanity, rape and torture. Victims cheered after judges sentenced Chad’s ex-dictator to life imprisonment. He raised his fists and shouted: “Down with France-Afrique!”—hinting absurdly that his conviction was a French colonial plot.
Perhaps 40,000 people died in Chad during Mr Habré’s reign of terror between 1982 and 1990. Armed by America (and supported with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid because of his opposition to Muammar Qadaffi’s regime in Libya), his political police crushed any tribe they deemed a threat to his rule. Simply belonging to one was enough to have you locked away in one of his prisons, the most sinister of which was a swimming pool covered by a concrete roof. Torture was routine: a favourite technique was to tie all four limbs behind the back to induce paralysis; another was to force a victim’s mouth around the exhaust pipe of a running vehicle.
Prosecutors had little difficulty linking such crimes back to Mr Habré. One woman testified that he had...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1WYBdeH
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