- Title: [SW News] (Washington Post)African Eyes Opened by Ex-Leader's Indictment
- From:[]
- Date :[]Fri Feb 04 2000 - 23:30:26 MST
"Warlords in Somalia, where murder is part of everyday life and rape a common tool
of battle, were said to be following every twist in the case. When Mengistu Haile Mariam,
the former Ethiopian ruler accused of causing the deaths of 1 million citizens, ventured
into South Africa for medical treatment, he had to scramble back to his refuge in
Zimbabwe, to avoid twin legal maneuvers: one to try him in South Africa, the other seeking
his extradition to Ethiopia."
African Eyes Opened by Ex-Leader's
Indictment
Former Ruler of Chad Charged While in Exile
- By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 5, 2000; Page A13
NAIROBI, Feb. 4-In Africa, where for decades rulers have done pretty much as they
wished--torturing, executing and jetting into comfortable exile when finally deposed--what
happened in Senegal this week represented a stunning reversal of fortune.
On Thursday, Hissene Habre, the polished intellectual who governed Chad for most of the
1980s, stepped out of his house in the affluent section of Dakar, the Senegalese capital
where he has lived comfortably in exile since 1990 on the estimated $11 million he brought
with him. He was escorted to a modest courtroom by Senegalese police guards. There, he
stood before a judge who had spent the previous week listening to Chadian citizens testify
to the tortures they said Habre ordered.
By the time Habre returned to his house, he had been indicted for torture and
"barbarity." He will remain under house arrest until his trial, the date of
which has not been set.
"This is huge," said Reed Brody, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, the
New York-based watchdog group that helped organize Habre's indictment and also played a
prominent role in the case that inspired it--the one against former Chilean military ruler
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who has been under house arrest in London for 16 months.
"First of all, this would be unthinkable in most African countries," Brody said.
"This is the first time to my knowledge that any African has been held for human
rights crimes other than in the country in which the crimes were committed--much less a
former head of state. And it's the first time outside of the Pinochet case that a former
head of state has been arrested for human rights violations anywhere in the world."
The Pinochet case, in which Britain has considered the retired general's extradition to
Spain to face charges for crimes allegedly committed during his 17-year rule in Chile, was
followed closely in Africa even before Habre's alleged victims brought their case. The
notion that a former head of state could be prosecuted abroad for human rights violations
caught the attention of many on the continent.
Warlords in Somalia, where murder is part of everyday life and rape a common tool of
battle, were said to be following every twist in the case. When Mengistu Haile Mariam, the
former Ethiopian ruler accused of causing the deaths of 1 million citizens, ventured into
South Africa for medical treatment, he had to scramble back to his refuge in Zimbabwe, to
avoid twin legal maneuvers: one to try him in South Africa, the other seeking his
extradition to Ethiopia.
Even so, few expected the action that unfolded so swiftly in Senegal in the 10 days since
the case against Habre was filed.
"Senegal can hold its head up high today," Alioune Tine, of the African Assembly
for the Defense of Human Rights, said in a statement from Dakar. "My country is
setting an example for Africa by showing that Africans can take care of their own
problems. The time when brutal despots could just take their bank accounts and move next
door is coming to an end."
The case against Habre was compiled over years in the kind of obscurity that Chad usually
occupies in world affairs. Victims of torture and survivors of political killings who
organized themselves into the Chadian Association of Victims of Political Repression and
Crime shortly after Habre fled to Senegal, did the research for the case. The association
prepared files on what each person reported enduring at the hands of Habre's secret police
force.
The accounts originally were intended for the truth commission organized by Idriss Deby,
the general who replaced Habre. But the commission took no further action after concluding
that Habre's government had killed 40,000 people and tortured 200,000. The victims'
organization fell moribund until Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998 prompted
Chadian attorneys to seek the assistance of Human Rights Watch.
In agreeing to pursue Habre, "the decisive factor was that he was in Senegal,"
Brody said. "If there's a candidate in Africa to do the right thing, it's
Senegal." The nation was proud of being the first in Africa to ratify a treaty last
year on creating an international human rights tribunal. More important, not only had it
ratified the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture, under which Britain honored Spain's
warrant on Pinochet, it had also incorporated the convention's precepts into the
Senegalese criminal code.
Behind the closed doors of Dakar Regional Court, Judge Demba Kandji read the details of 97
alleged political killings, 142 cases of torture and 100 "disappearances,"
according to court papers. He then summoned Habre, 57, to court to read the indictment.
The former dictator pleaded not guilty.
On a continent where brutality has so reliably trumped law, the impact of the case is
already clear.
"It's a wake up call," said Michael Posner of the Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights in New York. "It tells the leaders of Somalia and Burundi and Sierra Leone
that one day, in some form, they may be personally accountable for their actions."
(c) Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company
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